


Hindsight

by byocryptid (Neurofancier), Neurofancier



Series: Hindsight [1]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Academia, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, COVID-19, Canon Disabled Character, Catharsis, Comedy, Escapism, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Nonbinary Character, None of the characters from the show will die, Other, That is my vow there's enough death already IRL, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:55:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25859311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neurofancier/pseuds/byocryptid, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neurofancier/pseuds/Neurofancier
Summary: Crozier shouldn’t have joined a research trip run by Fitzjames, his sworn enemy. He should have salvaged his reputation while he had the chance. And above all, he should have paid more attention to the news coming from Wuhan.But you know what they say about hindsight.OR: The silly/serious AU where they're all in a research ship stranded at sea during the pandemic.Now with footnotes!FINAL CHAPTER!
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames, Commander James Fitzjames/Lt Henry T. D. Le Vesconte, Thomas Jopson/Lt Edward Little, William Gibson/Cornelius Hickey
Series: Hindsight [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1876471
Comments: 81
Kudos: 89





	1. February 2020

**Author's Note:**

> Who has two thumbs and is using fanfiction to cope? This gal!
> 
> This fic was inspired by the true story of a ship that was stranded at sea during the pandemic and my own time in academia. I did a lot research for it, but I also played it fast and loose with some details. If something looks like it wouldn’t work like that in real life, it probably doesn’t.
> 
> Trigger warning: This first chapter is set in February 2020, when most of the world was still ignoring the virus. Although covid-19 makes only a brief cameo, references to it might still be triggering to some people. Proceed with caution.
> 
> The chapter also includes some examples of racism, colonialism, ableism, and a bunch of other -isms, mostly to criticize them. If you’d like to know more before reading it, feel free to message me at my [tumblr](https://neurofancier.tumblr.com/ask).
> 
> Betaed by the lovely [jbgyllen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jbgyllen). All remaining mistakes are my own. Thanks also to [mothicalcreatures](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laelreenia/pseuds/mothicalcreatures/), who taught me a lot about Judaism and helped me reconsider my portrayal of Blanky.

“What in hell’s pits is that?” Crozier asked as he and Jopson retrieved their luggage from the cab.

Jopson adjusted his grip on his wheeled suitcase and grabbed his backpack. “That would be the expedition’s mascot, Doctor.”

Crozier squinted at it. The polar bear stencilled on the hull of the ship must have been at least ten feet tall. “Are they aware this ship will not go anywhere near to the Arctic?”

Jopson grimaced. “I believe it’s meant to be a homage to the bear our sponsor used to show in some of its vintage ads.”

Sure enough, the bear held a bottle of cola in one of it’s paws, raised as if in mid-toast. “Of course.” Crozier ran a hand over his face. “As if it wasn’t bad enough that they’re the ones sponsoring us, we must also have a constant reminder throughout the voyage.”

Dr Silna and her own grad student stopped next to them, both also carrying their luggage.

“Oh, that is quite large,” Goodsir said, peering up at the polar bear.

Dr Silna’s hands lashed across the air as she signed.

Jopson, who had been teaching himself how to sign but was still far from proficient in it, frowned. “I apologize, Doctor Silna, the last part was a bit too fast for me. What did you say that bear reminded you of?”

“Tuunbaq,” Goodsir translated for his advisor as Doctor Silna signed. “A… bear common in tales from her tribe.”

“A sort of vengeful guardian spirit,” Crozier explained. He was familiar with her culture from the time they had been working together in the Arctic. They had spent many sleepless nights in the base trading stories and drinking hot chocolate spiked with vodka.

Silna nodded approvingly.

“Oh.” Jopson he inspected the bear. “I suppose it does look rather vengeful, Doctor Silna.”

“This is ridiculous.” Crozier shook his head. “It is making a mockery of our entire mission. What self-respecting scientist would agree to associate themselves with _that_?”

“Doctor Franklin and Doctor Fitzjames, it seems,” Jopson pointed at them.

Crozier looked over to the men. The two doctors were posing for a handful of journalists by the gangway, and next to them was a man dressed as a bear waving for the cameras. As if that wasn’t ridiculous enough, someone thought it’d be a good idea to give Franklin and Fitzjames matching captain costumes. Fitzjames wore his as if it was a fashion statement and not something more befitting of a child.

“Let’s do one where I pretend to be a hunter shooting the bear!” Fitzjames could be heard, proclaiming proudly. “Does anyone have something I can hold as if it were a rifle?”

Crozier snorted. “Very eco-friendly.”

“Yes, Doctor,” was Jopson's cautious reply.

Silna finger spelt a word.

Goodsir tilted his head. “What does yiffing mean?”

“Ah.” Jopson cleared his throat. “I would advise against googling it.”

Doctor Silna smirked.

Crozier gripped the handle of his luggage and marched toward the gangway.

By the time he reached them, Doctor Fitzjames and Doctor Franklin seemed to be done pretending to kill an endangered animal. As he saw Crozier approach, Fitzjames called out, with a smile. “Doctor Crozier!” He turned to face the journalists. “You absolutely must get a statement from Doctor Crozier, he’s one of the senior researchers of this trip.”

“Yes!” Franklin agreed. “You must get a picture with our two very own Twitter celebrities.”

“Perhaps at a different time,” Crozier murmured gruffly as he tried to bypass the group.

Fitzjames’ smile faded.

“Come on, Crozier,” Franklin said with that shallow, fatherly tone that always set Crozier’s teeth on edge. He put an arm around Crozier’s shoulders. “These people came here to support us and our sponsor! Letting them take a few pictures of us is the least we can do. It will help with our… what did you call it, James?”

“Branding, Doctor,” was Fitzjames’ prompt reply.

Franklin nodded. “Yes. It will help our branding.”

Before Crozier could protest, a flash went off. He blinked, the unexpected brightness burning his retinas. He could imagine what he must look like in that picture: chubby and ruddy, his face lined and pockmarked, his hair thinner than ever. He must have made quite a pathetic sight, especially as he was next to someone as handsome as Fitzjames.

He squirmed out of Franklin’s grasp. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to take my luggage to my cabin. I’m in a hurry.”

For a second, Crozier believed he saw a look of hurt on Fitzjames’ face. But then, one of the journalists asked him what his twitter handle was, and James forgot about Crozier entirely. Francis picked up his bags once again and started climbing up the gangway, Jopson close behind him.

Behind them, Doctor Silna and Goodsir had reached the crowd of journalists.

“And this is Doctor Silna!” Crozier could hear Fitzjames say behind him. “The expedition recognizes that climate change will affect both native and disabled communities more harshly. That’s why we’re delighted to have an expert of her calibre in our team who can also bring that unique perspective!”

“Yes, we’re glad for the Eskimo representation,” Doctor Franklin agreed.

"Inuit, Doctor."

“What is she saying?” One of the journalists asked as Silna started signing.

“Em,” Goodsir, standing a few feet away from them, murmured reluctantly, “I am not sure I can say that in front of the cameras.”

Crozier chuckled to himself and boarded the ship.

-

The expedition was meant to be the flagship of a new initiative that sought to bridge the academic world and the business world. A couple dozen researchers had been invited. Although they all came from very different approaches, they all had one thing in common: their research was focused on man-made climate change, conservation and sustainability. The aim was to foster cross-field discussion as they experienced the effects of pollution on marine life firsthand.

Of course, as Crozier pointed out when he first heard of it, the entire idea was stupid. Why launch what was essentially a glorified cruise when that money would be better spent on research grants? And what about the irony of studying ocean pollution while causing quite a lot of pollution themselves? The entire concept was gauche and tasteless. It was a shallow PR stunt meant to improve the image of a company that wasn’t exactly known for its environmentally-friendly policies. To take part in it would have been to legitimize their sponsor’s practices. Crozier had refused to apply on principle alone.

But then, Sophia broke up with him for a third and final time.

That night, Crozier had headed for the liquor store on autopilot, ready to put an end to five years of sobriety. He grabbed a bottle of whiskey, and as he queued to pay for it, his phone began to ring.

It was Jopson.

Crozier stood there as his phone rang in his hand, his grad student’s name flashing up on the screen.

“It’s your turn,” the man behind him said. The shop assistant had just finished ringing up someone else’s purchase.

Crozier turned around and put the bottle of whiskey back on the shelf; he pressed “answer”, and said: “Jopson.”

“Good evening, Doctor Crozier,” Jopson replied, a forced levity in his voice. “I apologize for calling at this hour. I had some questions about that paper we discussed yesterday that couldn’t wait until our next meeting.”

Later, Crozier learned that Jopson had found out about the breakup through a flatmate’s sister’s girlfriend. But, even back in that liquor store, Crozier already suspected Jopson knew, somehow. He rested his forehead against the wall and closed his eyes. Surrounded by bottles of liquor, he lectured favourite grad student about how magnetic minerals found in sediments could be used as a record of past climates; he explained how the composition of those sediments indicated their origin; he informed him of the readings they had gotten during his last field trip to the Antarctic.

Crozier talked and talked and talked until he was no longer desperate for a drink.

“Thank you, Doctor Crozier,” Jopson said when Crozier went silent. “It’s all much clearer now. Your help was invaluable.”

“Cut the crap, Jopson,” Crozier snapped as he finally exited the liquor store without having bought one single thing.

“Sir?”

“Oh, nevermind.” He lifted the collar of his coat to protect his neck from the biting cold. “It’s about time we go away for a while. Can you look into conferences and research trips that are still accepting applications? Preferably as far as possible from England.”

“Of course, Doctor Crozier,” Crozier heard him type. “Anything else?”

“That’ll be all.” Crozier hesitated. “Jopson?”

“Yes, Doctor?”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it, Doctor Crozier.”

-

Blanky was sitting with his back against the headboard of Crozier’s bed, his prosthetic leg extended in front of him. His knee always ached after lifting weight. For all the expedition claimed to take the needs of disabled people seriously, no one had been tasked with carrying the man’s luggage down the stairs for him.

“It’s a travesty, it’s what it is,” Crozier said as he fished his shoes from under his bed.

“I’m used to it,” Blanky shrugged, watching his phone.

“All fluff and no substance, just like everything else about this expedition.” Crozier sat down on the edge of the bed to put his shoes on.

“Preaching to the choir, mate.” Blanky patted his arm.

“Where should I put your socks, Doctor Crozier?” Jopson emerged from behind the wardrobe door.

“Jopson,” Crozier sighed, “Do I have to remind you again that you’re my grad student, not my servant?”

Jopson gave him a toothy smile. “A rose by any other name, Doctor.”

Blanky chuckled. “Jopson, let Crozier handle his own socks and go have a shower. We don’t want to be late to the inaugural dinner, do we?”

Jopson gasped. “Of course not, Doctor Blanky.” Grabbing his bag of toiletries and a change of clothes, he vanished into the cabin’s bathroom.

“How do I go about finding myself one like him?” Blanky asked.

Crozier smiled fondly. Jopson had joined one of his first year classes, smooth-faced and over-eager. The very first week, Jopson had shown up at his office to preemptively apologize about any missed classes and stiltedly explain his family situation.

“If things are that difficult back home, you could just have emailed me, you know,” Crozier had told him then.

Jopson had smiled in that way that Crozier later learnt meant that he was uncomfortable. “I like to do things properly, Doctor.”

Crozier had thought he was just saying that. Eventually, he discovered how much Jopson meant it.

It hadn’t taken long for Jopson to become one of the youngest interns in his lab. The man had quickly proved himself to be more reliable than many of the established members of the department. But partway through Jopson’s second year, Thomas’ mother had died. To settle her affairs, Jopson was excused for the remainder of the semester.. Crozier fought tooth and nail to keep the administration from rescinding Jopson’s scholarship. The battle involved more university politics than Crozier was comfortable with, but it had been worth it, especially when Jopson returned the favour a year later by becoming his TA and covering for him as Crozier went cold-turkey on his alcohol addiction.

By now, they had known each other for nearly a decade. Despite their roles of student and advisor, there was a fondness between them that Francis shared only with his closest friends.

“I don’t think there’s anyone quite like him,” Crozier settled for. He tied his shoes and sat next to Blanky.

“I’ve heard the stories. I reckon you’re right.” Blanky said knowingly. He set his phone aside. “So, I have to ask…”

Crozier braced himself. “If it’s about Sophia…”

“I know about Sophia.” This didn’t surprise Crozier. Francis was tight-lipped when it came to his private life, but rumours travelled fast in university towns. It was likely the entire faculty knew about it already. “I wanted to ask about Fitzjames.”

Crozier groaned. “I’d rather you asked about Sophia, to be honest.”

“You can’t blame me for being curious. You’re not a fan of him.” Blanky elbowed him, a grin on his face. “I don’t know what surprises me more: that you applied to take part in an expedition run by Doctor Franklin and him, or that they actually let you come.”

“Maybe I just needed a vacation,” Crozier said testily. “And as for how our application got approved, I blame it entirely on Jopson. That lad can do anything.”

“And here I thought after seeing those photos that you two had buried the hatchet,” Blanky picked up his phone once again.

Crozier broke into a cold sweat. “Wait. Photos?”

Blanky showed him the screen of his phone. The company that sponsored the trip had tweeted one of the pictures Fitzjames had forced him to take with him that morning. Franklin had been cropped out of it, but Crozier hadn’t. Fitzjames looked radiant in his captain costume, his eyes bright and full of good humour. Even his crooked teeth made him more handsome, humanizing his severe features. The man in the polar bear costume behind them managed to look both goofy and menacing—a cross between Doctor Silna’s Tuunbaq and a cartoon cereal mascot.

As for Crozier… Well, he had known what he would look like, hadn’t he? There was that receding hairline and that body that could be described as portly only if one felt charitable. There was that sour expression he was so accustomed to seeing in the mirror. At least his beard hid some of the lines in his face. But that wasn’t too comforting considering how prominently the logo of the expedition’s sponsor was shown in the photo. Of course, Crozier had not expected he’d be able to hide the expedition’s connection to the fizzy drink company, but did it really have to be so obvious?

“Maybe I should drop out of the expedition while I’m ahead,” he murmured. “Salvage as much of my reputation as I can.”

Blanky laughed and patted his arm. “It’s too late for that, my friend.”

It probably was.

God, a drink would have been fantastic right about now.

The door of the bathroom opened, releasing a cloud of steam. Jopson emerged from it, skin flushed from his shower, his white button-down crispy, clean and wrinkle-free. “I’m all done, Doctors. We can leave when you’re ready.”

“Right, I should go get dressed then.” Blanky stood up with a wince. He must still be sore. Crozier knew for a fact that he’d still party harder than any of them during that night’s afterparty. “We wouldn’t want to miss Franklin and Fitzjames’ speeches, would we?”

“Oh, please. If I ever have to hear about that time Fitzjames met the CEO of Tesla again, it will be too soon.” Crozier got off the bed.

“Courage, Doctor Crozier.” Jopson opened the wardrobe once again. “Will you be wearing the navy tie or the burgundy one tonight?”

“Jopson, for the last time, you’re not my servant!” Crozier said.

“I’ll leave you two to it.” Blanky touched two fingers to his forehead in a mock salute and left the cabin.

-

Fitzjames did indeed talk during his speech about that time he had dinner with Elon Musk. He also mentioned that time he gave a TED talk, and found an excuse to discuss some of his volunteer work in Brazil and China.

“Insufferable braggart,” Crozier muttered to himself.

“I’m sure it will be over soon, Doctor,” Jopson whispered.

At least Crozier was in good company. Doctor Silna and her grad student had been put on the same table as them, as well as Blanky. There were also three lads from Oxford University—Doctors Little, Irving and Hodgson, as well as a Mister Des Voeux. Crozier vaguely recalled having read something of theirs at some point.

“...committed to sustainability with the firm belief that science is the way forward if we are to stop climate change,” Fitzjames was preaching, exhorting the supposed values of the trip’s sponsor.

“Oh, piss off,” Crozier grumbled. “Your employer steals Flint’s water, bottles it, and re-sells it back to them.”

Doctor Irving shushed him.

Fitzjames’ speech finally ended and food was served.

“That went on long enough for a couple of species to go extinct while he talked.” Crozier unfolded his napkin and placed it on his lap.

“I thought Doctor Franklin’s speech was very inspiring,” Doctor Irving protested.

Doctor Silna glared at Irving, her eyes narrowing as her hands moved sharply.

“What is she doing?” Des Voeux asked. “Is she having a stroke?”

Goodsir cleared his throat. “Doctor Silna says that quoting scripture when so many members of the expedition don’t share his religious beliefs is… inappropriate?” Doctor Silna corrected him with a gesture. “Ah. Yes. An asshole move?” he suggested.

She nodded, approving his translation.

Doctor Irving’s mouth was a thin line. “Regardless of the… beliefs of the individual members of the expedition, the passage itself was very fitting.”

Silna huffed and started signing.

Doctor Silna and Doctor Irving spent most of the first course in a spirited debate that was a veritable joy to behold. They were serving the second course—baked cod for the meat-eaters and vegan shepherd's pie for everyone else—when Fitzjames approached their table.

“Doctor Blanky! How is our resident meteorologist?” Fitzjames extended his hand, a smarmy smile on his lips.

Blanky shook it from his seat. “Forgive me for not standing up, carrying my luggage was hell on my leg.”

Crozier had to hide a smile behind his soda. The fucker loved making people he disliked uncomfortable.

Sure enough, Fitzjames seemed suitably chastised. “Ah, yes, of course,” he cleared his throat. “I’ll discuss it with our logistic teams, there should have been someone available to carry your bags into the ship.” He turned toward Crozier. “Doctor Crozier! Did you see the picture our sponsor tweeted? It has become something of a meme.”

“What?” Crozier snapped. He took his phone out of his pocket. “You must be kidding.”

“Search for ‘old man, sailor and bear’,” Jopson chimed in next to him.

Crozier shot him a betrayed look. “You knew about this?”

Sure enough, his mentions were full of images featuring Fitzjames, the man in the bear suit, and him portrayed in different artistic styles.

Jopson ducked his head, apologetic. “I found the Grant Wood homage rather fetching.”

“The American Gothic one, right?” Fitzjames said.

Crozier typed the words in the search bar. Someone had drawn Fitzjames and him in the style of that painting. Francis himself was dressed as a farmer and was carrying the iconic pitchfork, whereas Fitzjames had been painted in the demure black dress of the farmer’s daughter. Tuunbaq could be seen in the background, menacingly raising a broken bottle of soda.

“The artist’s eye for colour is striking,” Doctor Little spoke for the first time that evening. He was looking at the same image in his phone.

“It really is, isn’t it?” Jopson seemed delighted that Little was agreeing with him.

“It’s ridiculous.” Crozier flushed, jaw tense, every word clipped. “This is meant to be a research expedition.”

“I think it’s rather nice. We have fanart!” Fitzjames exclaimed merrily. “What better way to raise awareness about climate-change than with some good-spirited humour? Not to mention, our sponsor is very happy that the original tweet is getting so much attention.”

Crozier rolled his eyes. “So long as _you’re_ getting enough attention.”

Fitzjames' smile disappeared. For a moment it seemed like he was going to say something in response; Crozier, still seated, glared up at his tall form, daring him to say the words. He was more than ready to make a public altercation out of this, if need be.

Fitzjames must have sensed that raising a fuss wasn’t in his best interest, because he pointedly turned his back to him. “Doctor Silna, there you are!” He cheerfully signed a good evening and asked her how she was.

Doctor Silna smiled warmly. 'I'm okay. How did the preparations for the expedition go?' she signed back.

Crozier watched Fitzjames, fully expecting the man to admit he couldn’t speak ASL. Fitzjames surprised him by replying with slow but technically correct signs that the preparations had been tiring, but that he was excited that the trip had begun.

Doctor Franklin chose that moment to join them. “James, remind me to introduce you to someone from the Berkeley team later, he’s said the most peculiar thing.”

“Hello, Doctor Franklin,” Fitzjames said. “I was telling Doctor Silna about that mix up we had with the caterer.”

“Oh, yes, that thing.” Doctor Franklin waved his hand dismissively. “Who would have thought there would have been so many people with allergies? Back in my time, no one cared about gluten. Anyway, I’m glad we found an alternative company in time for the expedition!”

“Doctor Franklin,” Mister Irving rose hurridley, smoothing down his front. “I wanted to congratulate you on your speech. It was so touching. ‘The wild animals honour me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the desert and streams in the wasteland.’ Absolutely brilliant,” he remarked.

“Why, thank you,” Franklin shook his hand. “Irving, isn’t it? And you must be Doctor Little and Doctor Hodgson. Your laboratory is doing an excellent job. Anyway, I’d love to stay and chat, but they’re about to serve the pudding. Shall we, Fitzjames?”

“Of course, Doctor Franklin,” Fitzjames said his goodbyes, and the two of them blessedly went back to the head table.

Crozier was glad to see them go.

-

It is a truth universally acknowledged that when a group of academics gathered together, alcohol would be involved. Crozier already knew this time would not be an exception. As dinner came to a close, Franklin proposed a toast, and then Fitzjames proposed a second toast, and now one hour later there was some god-awful dance music coming from god-knew-where and everyone was drunk.

Well, nearly everyone.

For obvious reasons, Crozier himself was one of the few to abstain. The loud music and the sight of his colleagues’ uncoordinated dancing had been giving him a headache, so he exited the mess hall and sat himself down on the stairs outside. Every once in a while, someone would walk by him on their way to the deck, but he was mostly left to his own devices. He chose to spend this free, peaceful time obsessively checking the twitter hashtag people were using to share new versions of the picture of him, Fitzjames and the bear.

“Oh, this is ridiculous!” he murmured to himself as he found one that reimagined him as what looked like a pokemon, complete with red cheeks and a thunder-shaped tail.

Someone sat next to him. It was Silna. Her own cheeks were also rather flushed, probably from the straight vodka he noticed she was gulping down earlier.

She gestured at his phone and signed, 'What are you doing?'

Crozier showed her the screen.

She laughed.

“Oh, piss off,” Crozier replied. 'Fitzjames is an arse!' he signed. They hadn’t agreed on a sign for Fitzjames’ name, but he pointed at the corners of his mouth with his thumb and index in imitation of the lines on the man’s face. Silna seemed to get it.

'He seems okay for a white guy', she replied.

Crozier grimaced. “Really?”

Silna raised one shoulder in a shrug. 'Learning ASL was decent of him.'

Crozier sighed heavily. 'I suppose.' He didn’t particularly want to talk about the man—especially if Doctor Silna wasn’t willing to insult Fitzjames—so he changed the topic. 'How is Goodsir adapting to his job at the laboratory?'

Goodsir was a medical doctor who recently vacated his medical practice to pursue a PhD. It was a rare move for someone of his age. Especially in these times when getting funding was becoming more difficult than ever. However, Henry seemed to be truly passionate about their research.

'He’s a hard worker,' Doctor Silna said. It was high praise coming from the usually laconic woman.

'It must be nice to have a translator, too,' Crozier replied. 'You always complained about how hard it is to get the administration to agree to pay for one.'

'Yes, but I don’t like how he waters down my cursing.' It was Silna’s time to sigh. 'Last week I called the Chancellor a—'she did a series of rapid-fire signs. Crozier managed to recognize the ones for ‘fuck’, ‘shit’ and ‘dick’, among others.

'How did he translate it?' Crozier asked.

Silna finger-spelt it. 'Unpleasant.'

Crozier snorted. 'You mustn’t have been happy with that.'

Silna shook her head. 'He speaks for me. When he censors me, he robs me of my voice.'

Francis nodded slowly. 'That’s not good.'

With anyone else, he might have offered to have a talk with Goodsir, but he knew Doctor Silna well.

She was a proud woman. She would not appreciate it.

'I hope you’ll get him to understand that,' Crozier signed instead.

Silna touched her mouth with the palm of her hand and then lowered her hand. 'Thank you.'

They spent some time looking at the most ridiculous images of him and Fitzjames on his phone until Crozier, exhausted from the trip, excused himself and headed for his cabin.

As he walked through the ship’s long corridors, he idly checked his twitter. His last twitter thread had gotten a couple of interesting responses. Other than that, there wasn’t much activity on his twitter feed at this time. Some selfies from the party he had just left. An interesting thread about Epstein’s fascination with eugenics. A meme about the Tory power stance. A call for papers for a conference in Dublin. An article about that outbreak in Wuhan. Trump’s latest Twitter rant. Some troubling footage of the Australian bushfires.

He was looking at a video of the latter as he opened the door of his cabin one-handed.

This was shaping up to be a very odd year, he thought.

He connected his phone to the charger and got ready for bed.


	2. Late February 2020

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't resist the urge to infodump, so this chapter comes with footnotes! You should be able to navigate to them by clicking on the little numbers and then go back to the story by clicking on the triangles.
> 
> This chapter was also betaed by the amazing [jbgyllen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jbgyllen/pseuds/jbgyllen). She's writing a story in which the foxy Tobias Menzies plays a university professor and you should check it out!

“My God, what is he doing?” Crozier asked.

Fitzjames and the man in the bear costume were pretending to wrestle. Doctor Le Vesconte was recording them with Fitzjames’ phone, and by the look of it, they could barely hold their giggles.

“Doctor Fitzjames has been making some videos of the expedition for our sponsor, Doctor,” Jopson supplied.

“Hark!” Fitzjames was saying as they passed by him on their way to breakfast. By then, James had been caught in a headlock long enough that his face was turning an unhealthy shade of aubergine. “Thou shall not defeat me, vile beast!”

“Good Lord,” Crozier muttered. “Does he never tire of performing like a dog?”

“I heard he’ll be interviewing the members of this expedition this week, so I suppose not, Doctor.”

Crozier sighed. The last few weeks had been a mixed bag of absurd ice-breaking activities and sponsored actions with the occasional truly scientific experiment peppered in for flavour.

For example, yesterday they attended a series of lectures by a team of researchers from Australia about the Great Barrier Reef. Crozier had found them very educational, and relished learning about a subject he wasn’t an expert on, as always. But then, it all turned sour when Fitzjames announced that they would be paying a visit to a coral reef by Aruba.

Many of the members of the expedition were overjoyed. Crozier wasn’t. Not only did he not have a diving certification, but he was also a rather clumsy swimmer. There was a reason why he had always prefered waiting until water had frozen before studying it.

He had spent about an hour snorkelling about, feeling very graceless indeed in his borrowed swimming trunks and a pair of swim fins that were much too large for someone his height. To rub salt in the wound, Fitzjames himself had turned out to be a diving expert. While Francis did his best to stay afloat, James had swam past him as gracefully as if blessed by Neptune’s entire cohort of oceanids. While Francis tried to learn how to breathe through that plastic tube without choking on seawater, Fitzjames had explored the untold beauties of the depths of the ocean. He had even brought Crozier several colourful conches that he had found, as if to prove to him how vastly superior his skills were.

God, the man was insufferable.

Eventually, Crozier had returned to the ship, feeling defeated. He had spent the rest of the evening making conversation with Doctor Collins who, despite being an experienced diver himself, preferred to stay out of the water for unspecified reasons.

 _What a nightmare of a day_ , Crozier thought. _Thank heavens it’s over, now._

“Did anyone find out who’s in that blasted bear costume, at least?” he asked Jopson as he pushed open the door of the mess hall.

Thomas shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Some say the members of the crew are taking turns wearing it, while others believe the costume is haunted and there’s no one inside it.”

“And they say academics are not superstitious,” Crozier chuckled.

Francis and Jopson filled their trays with plates of food and cups of tea before taking their seats at their usual table. Doctor Silna and her grad student were the only ones already there. They were looking at something on her phone, twin frowns of worry on their faces. 

“Is everything alright?” Crozier asked.

Doctor Silna and Goodsir exchanged a silent glance. The two of them had gotten so good at reading each other that sometimes they barely needed words to communicate.

Doctor Silna finger-spelt one word: ‘Wuhan.’

“Is it about that virus?” Jopson’s eyes widened.

Everyone had heard about it by now, of course. It had been in the periphery of Crozier’s attention for a while. The WHO claimed it was nothing to worry about, and all signs pointed that it’d be no worse than the Avian Flu, but something about it worried him regardless. Call it paranoia. Call it intuition. He didn’t have any evidence to back it up, and yet...

“Doctor Silna knows a doctor in epidemiology from her stay at Beijing University,” Goodsir explained in a hushed whisper, signing as he said the words out loud. “She’s been exchanging messages with her. She claims that the situation is worse than we realize.”

‘Is it really that bad?’ Crozier leant forward on his elbows.

Doctor Silna nodded and passed him her phone.

Crozier put his reading glasses on.

Some of it went over his head. Crozier was not a medical doctor, after all. But one didn’t survive long in academia if they weren’t able to skim a paper full of terminology they didn’t know and still manage to understand most of it. And what Crozier did understand was very concerning.

There was an exponential graph that was particularly eloquent.

‘It hasn’t been peer-reviewed yet,’ Doctor Silna signed when Crozier raised his eyes and passed the phone to Jopson. ‘But her method is solid and her model seems accurate.’

Crozier nodded slowly. He took his glasses off and tapped his chin with them.

“What are you talking about?” Doctor Irving asked. 

By now most of the usual occupants now joined the small group at the table. Jopson showed the screen of the phone to Doctor Little, who leaned closer to read the paper.

“We were discussing that virus that has been affecting Wuhan,” Goodsir said.

“Oh, that?” Mister Des Voeux sighed. “The media is blowing it out of proportion. It’s absurd.”

“We have reasons to believe that they’re not.” Crozier sat back. “In fact, they might not be taking the threat seriously enough.” He took his cup of tea and sipped it slowly.

“You can’t possibly believe the reports,” Des Voeux sneered while Goodsir translated for Silna. “It’s probably a hoax concocted by the Chinese. You know they can be trusted.” He seemed to notice Doctor Silna’s almond shaped eyes, because he hastily corrected himself. “The Chinese government, I mean.”

Doctor Silna glared at him and called him a cocksucker with a sign that everyone at the table understood.

Des Voeux turned red with anger. “You can’t be serious. What are you suggesting? That this is going to be some sort of Armageddon, with people dropping dead from the flu? That’d be ridiculous.”

“Son, how long have you been studying climate change for?” Blanky’s tone was tired. 

“He’s an undergrad,” Little replied. “Started working in our lab this year.”

Blanky chuckled. “Well, lad, let me share with you a lesson that will otherwise take you years to master on your own.” He shifted on the seat to get comfortable. “Just because something is inconvenient it doesn’t mean it’s not real.”

Doctor Silna nodded. Crozier knew this virus hit a little bit too close to home for her. She was a palaeontologist who had started her career studying extinct animals preserved in the Arctic ice. A decade ago, however, she had stumbled into an amazing discovery. She had found particles of the Spanish flu in one of her samples. Since then she had been developing the theory that the permafrost might be a reservoir of viral pathogens. Her work was now focused on raising awareness of the consequences of those pathogens being awakened by the thawing of the permafrost. 1

To her, this pandemic must be all her worst fears coming to fruition.

“All of us have been told we were alarmists at some point,” Doctor Little said in that unassuming voice of his, his eyes still scanning the paper in the phone.

“So you believe it, then?” Des Voeux challenged him.

Doctor Little took his fork and dug into his breakfast. “I don’t have enough information to have formed an opinion of it yet.”

Jopson passed the phone to the next person after Silna nodded her permission. “What if those models are right?”

“We don’t know that they are,” Little pointed out. “It’s too soon to say.”

“If they aren’t, nothing would happen.” Irving scrolled through the paper. “But if they are and we don’t act now, we could be looking at millions of deaths.”

“Ah!” Hodgson said with a luminous smile as he stirred his tea. “Pascal’s Wager.”2

“That’s not what the powers that be will say, though,” Blanky said. “They’ll say that if we do act and the models are wrong, the economic consequences of acting on it would be devastating. Millions of jobs lost. Think of the stock market!” He chuckled and shook his head with his habitual cynicism.

“But... there are _human lives_ at stake,” Goodsir said, expression concerned. “Surely no government will prioritize the economy over that.”

There was a pregnant silence.

“Alas,” Jopson dragged his chair closer to the table, “we have little control over what politicians will do. I was thinking more of what those models would mean for us. For the expedition.”

“It’d have to be cancelled,” Crozier steepled his fingers.

Blanky nodded. “And fast, before the travel bans start, or we won’t be able to return home.”

Doctor Silna gestured at Goodsir, who translated out loud for those who didn’t speak ASL, “The supply chain would be interrupted. There’d be food and medicine shortages.”

“The situation is pressing. Oh, no." Crozier slapped the table, frustrated. "Bleeding Christ!”

“What?” Goodsir asked, alarmed.

Crozier closed his eyes, trying to think of an alternative solution, but none came to mind. “I’ll have to speak with Franklin.”

“You’ll survive, Doctor,” Jopson patted his back.

*

Doctor Irving was on his way back to the cabin he shared with Hodgson. Enrolling in this expedition had turned out to be a worse idea than he had thought. A research trip through the Caribbean had sounded like a great way to blow off some steam without neglecting his work. Instead, he spent most of the day seasick and in a bad mood. The situation was so dire he was even starting to miss England’s weather. There had to be a better way to get a research grant. And now all this talk about that virus…

Irving had asked Goodsir to send him the raw data the epidemiologist from Beijing had used on her paper. At first glance, it seemed like her model was correct, but he wanted to run some numbers himself. He’d been working on an algorithm to predict the global mean temperature, and he was sure that with some tweaking he could use it to predict how the disease would spread, too.

He opened his cabin with his key card and stopped. There was a man inside the cabin.

He was kneeling on the floor, his rear high in the hair and wiggling from side to side as he looked for something under Irving’s bed.

“Excuse me,” Irving said, too surprised to go for anything stronger than that. “Can I help you?”

The man paused and knelt up. He was a redhead with a gaunt face and bright eyes. Irving had seen him around during the trip. Cornelious Hickey. During one of the ice breakers, Fitzjames had had to repeat it several times before he had answered.

“Oh!” The man said, standing up and dusting his jeans. “Wait, this isn’t my cabin?”

“No. It’s not.” Irving tapped the number on the door.

Approaching the door, Hickey looked at it with a little frown. “Oh, yes. My bad! Must have gotten lost. You know how these ships are, all these corridors are all the same.”

“Right.” Irving had to take a step back. The man was standing a bit too close to him. “And you opened the door how, exactly?”

Hickey gave him a sharp smile. “Why, it was open. It really worried me. I thought someone might have walked in and stolen my valuables.”

Irving didn’t buy it for a second, but he was much too tired for this conversation. “I’d say they didn’t, so how about you go back to your own cabin?”

“Great idea. See you around, Doctor Irving!” The man waved at him over his shoulder and finally walked down the corridor, a jaunty bounce to his step.

Irving closed the door behind himself and sat down heavily on his bed. 

When he had gotten the news that his application to take part in this expedition had been approved, he had researched all the other doctors of mathematics 3 that were joining. When he had seen Doctor Hickey’s Google Scholar profile he had been very excited by what he had found there. The man had published papers on a very wide range of topics. It was surprising to find a scholar so versatile, and especially one under forty.

Now he was starting to suspect that there was a reason for that.

The door opened once again and Hodgson entered the cabin. “Ah, Irving! You really should have joined us on our walk through the deck.” He hung his jacket on the doorknob of the wardrobe. “It was most invigorating.”

“Wasn’t really in the mood.” Irving pressed the palms of his hands over his eyes. He was getting a migraine.

“What’s wrong, old friend?” He sat next to him on the mattress and started taking off his shoes. “Out with it.”

Irving thought back of how Hickey had been looking under his bed. “I think someone might be trying to steal our research.”

*

There had been a time when Crozier and Franklin had been friends. That had been back in the nineties, when Crozier had first joined the university’s PhD program. Franklin had been finishing his dissertation back then, and had been everything Crozier was not. Franklin came from a wealthy family and had plenty of connections. He had an Oxbridge pedigree. More importantly, he knew how to navigate the complex waters of the academic world. With a glance, he could identify hidden alliances and decades-old grudges, and knew how to work the labyrinthine bureaucracy in his favour.

Crozier, on the other hand, had been a nobody: a transfer from Belfast with a letter of recommendation from a professor only tenuously connected to Crozier’s new advisor. People had commented on his Irish accent, and he had to withstand more than one veiled insinuation about his connection to the IRA. He didn’t have a head for university politics, which he found confusing and tedious, and you couldn’t have found someone less suited than him for diplomacy if you had shaved a badger and then set it loose in a department meeting. It was a wonder he managed to make it through that first year.

He had expected Franklin to ostracize him, as all the other members of their department did. Instead, the man had surprised him by taking him under his wing. They had been very different, and often argued, but at the end of the day they respected each other. Franklin often invited Crozier to have dinner at his apartment with him and his fiance, Jane. Franklin hadn’t yet been a teetotaler back then, and the three of them had spent many evenings discussing their theories, sharing the latest department gossip, and getting gloriously drunk.

Crozier had used to relish the cosy intimacy of it until he had made an unpleasant discovery. The reason no one else was ever invited to join them on those evenings was that Franklin was ashamed to be seen with him. Franklin respected Crozier’s sharp intelligence and admired his insight, but he knew that Crozier’s position would always be precarious, and didn’t want their friendship to become widely known.

It had hurt to make that discovery, but Crozier was a proud man. He hadn’t wanted to make any scenes. Instead, he had quietly retreated, until their relationship was friendly, but distant.

And then years later, after several research expeditions, spending nearly two decades trying to get tenure and finding a position in the same university as Franklin, something terrible had happened.

He had met Franklin’s cousin.4

But Crozier didn’t want to think about Sophia now. He had a job to do. He steeled himself like a soldier preparing for battle and marched forward.

Franklin and Fitzjames were on the deck, chatting between themselves. Fitzjames hadn’t worn that godawful Captain costume since that first day, but he seemed committed to a nautical aesthetic regardless. Today he was wearing a stripped cable jumper and loose navy capris. _How pretentious_ , Crozier thought, as he watched him lean on the railing, the sea breeze tousling his curls.

Franklin straightened up as he saw Crozier approach them. “Ah, Francis. Fitzjames was telling me about his volunteer work in Rio.”

Crozier barely kept himself from rolling his eyes. God, what an insufferable braggart. “I’m sure he was.”

Fitzjames narrowed his eyes. “Did you want anything, Doctor Crozier?”

“I do, actually.” Crozier rocked on his heels. “It is about the outbreak in Wuhan. I’m sure you heard of it.”

“Oh, this again.” Franklin sighed. “Don’t tell me you’re also here to tell me fanciful tales about how contagious that virus is.”

“As a matter of fact, I was, Doctor Franklin,” Crozier crossed his arms behind his back. “I’ve been talking with Doctor Silna…”

Franklin arched an eyebrow. “The Eskimo girl?”

“Inuk, Doctor,” Fitzjames corrected him.

Franklin waved this correction away. “If my memory serves me, I believe she is a paleontologist, is she not?” He wore the unimpressed sneer he reserved for what he considered to be the ‘inferior’ sciences. “Last time I checked, her field had very little to do with epidemiology. What on Earth could she know of a virus that has remained in China thus far?”

Crozier had to remind himself that losing his patience never worked with Franklin. “She has a contact in Beijing, a Doctor Zhang. An epidemiologist. She sent Doctor Silna some very troubling figures. If her models are correct, we could be looking at a global pandemic very soon.”

Franklin hummed thoughtfully. “These figures you mention, where have they been published?”

“They haven’t been published yet,” Crozier reluctantly admitted. “The paper is being reviewed right now.”

Franklin shared an amused look with Fitzjames. “I see. So all this fuss is about a paper that hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed.”

“You know how slow the publishing process is, Doctor Franklin.” Crozier stepped closer. “Doctor Silna reviewed the paper herself, and we discussed it with other experts aboard.” He thought back of their conversation at breakfast. “Several of us agreed it’s time to act now.”

“Mmh.” Franklin leant back against the railing. “And what would you have us do, Francis?”

Crozier rose to his full height, willing to use every ounce of authority he had. “Cancel the expedition.”

Fitzjames snorted. “Don’t be melodramatic!”

Crozier clenched his teeth. “I’m not being _melodramatic_. Imagine what could happen if a pandemic took place. We’d be stranded at sea with limited supplies.”

“The ship is stocked to be fully autonomous for months.” Franklin shook his head. “No, Francis, I don’t think there’s any reason to cancel the expedition. Even in the unlikely event that this virus was as serious as that Chinese girl claims, we’d be fine. In fact, I’d take it as a welcome vacation. Wouldn’t you, Fitzjames?”

“I certainly would.” A playful smile danced on Fitzjames face. “What’s more, I’d say that if that virus is really that contagious, I’d rather wait it out drinking margaritas in a cruise ship sailing through the Caribbean, where we’d be isolated from it.”

“With all due respect,” Crozier muttered through ground teeth, “I don’t think you’re taking this seriously enough.”

“Relax, Crozier.” Fitzjames squeezed his arm. Crozier glared at his hand until he removed it, his smile more muted now. “We’ll be fine. I’m sure it will be nothing but a simple flu.”

Crozier looked from one man to the other. They seemed amused. Indulgent, even, in Franklin’s case. He wasn’t going to get them to agree.

“I see,” Crozier said coldly. “Sorry to have bothered you, Doctor Franklin.”

And with those words he turned around and left.

*

“You exaggerate.”

“I do not,” Irving said. “I know what I saw.”

“What did you see?” Little asked as he and Des Veux walked into the room.

They were in one of the cabins that had been converted into a meeting room. When the expedition started, the organizers of the trip had put into place a complicated system to book them. It had involved both a broken web application and a colour-coded Google calendar. After a couple of weeks someone had grown tired of that and had taped a sheet of paper to the doors of each of the meeting rooms. Now anyone who needed one to make use of one of them would simply write their research team’s name and a time and date. 

They made do.

“Irving thinks Doctor Hickey is trying to steal our research,” Hodgson tapped the rim of his teacup with his spoon. He wasn’t using one of the ship’s standard-issue coffee mugs, but one of the fine china teacups he had brought in his personal luggage.

Edward had given up on trying to understand his labmates’ habits.

“That’s a serious accusation to make,” Little took a seat. “Why do you think that?”

“He was in our cabin earlier, looking under our bed,” Irving explained as he furiously typed something in his laptop.

“He got lost,” Hodgson took a sip from his cup of tea.

“No, he says that he got lost!” Irving corrected him.

“What’s the difference?” Des Voeux asked. He had that bored expression he always seemed to wear.

“He was lying!” Irving stabbed the ‘enter’ key with one finger and turned the laptop around to face Little and Des Voeux. “See?”

Little leaned forward on his elbows to look at the screen. It seemed to be a researchgate profile which, on closer inspection, belonged to Doctor Hickey. He scrolled down, eyes scanning the titles of the papers he had published. Little was not a mathematician like Irving, but he vaguely recognized some of the terms in the titles of the papers.

“What are we supposed to be looking at?” Des Voeux asked.

“Look at the number of published papers he has,” Irving said.

“Sixty-nine,” Des Voeux read. “ _Nice._ ”

“So he’s prolific. It doesn’t mean he steals other people’s research, John.” Hodgson set the teacup back down on the table.

“No, look.” Irving turned the laptop back around and scrolled all the way to the bottom. “He looks to be, what, in his mid-thirties? Some of those papers are from 2005! He would have been an undergrad back then.”

“Some professors will allow their students to appear as co-authors in the papers they publish thanks to their lab work,” Dex Voeux’s tone was resentful.

“He’s the sole author of a paper published in 2005!” Irving pointed at the screen.

“Really?” Hodgson looked at it over Irving’s shoulder. “How precocious.”

“Have you read the paper?” Little asked.

Irving opened his mouth and then closed it again. He grabbed the mouse and started clicking on links. “Oh, darn. It’s behind a paywall.”

“Most of the best things in life are, am I right?” Hodgson joked.

“Try Sci-hub,” Little suggested.

Irving typed. After a few seconds he shook his head. “It’s not there.”

“That is weird,” Little admitted.

“Oh, well, nothing we can do about it.” Hodgson shrugged. “Unless you’re planning to pay 30 pounds to Elsevier for it.”

It went beyond saying that all four of them would rather eat their shoes dipped in aioli than do that.

Irving pinched the bridge of his nose. “Still, it doesn’t make any sense. No one publishes in those journals as an undergrad.”

“Not if their professors won’t let them add their name to their papers,” Des Voeux insisted, only to be ignored by the others.

“Irving, are you sure there isn’t something else behind this?” Hodgson arched an eyebrow, a teasing smile on his lips.

Irving seemed genuinely confused by this. “What do you mean?”

“Well,” Edward started, and immediately regretted it when he saw Irving’s expression. He opened his messenger bag and took his MacBook out of it to have an excuse to avoid his eyes. “You do have a history of getting paranoid when you… have certain feelings.”

Irving stared at him. “What?”

“Just admit you fancy him,” Hodgson patted his back. “It’s the twenty-first century. The love that dares not speak its name is now out and proud.”

“You did go on and on about how you were dying to meet this Hickey guy,” Des Voeux noted. “It was pretty gay.”

Irving sputtered. “I’m not- Not that I have anything against that… lifestyle, Little.”

Edward really didn’t want to have this conversation again. “It’s fine.”

It was not.

Irving kept digging. “Love the sinner, hate the sin. I know you have no choice in the matter.” 

Edward wondered if the porthole in the opposite wall was big enough to throw himself out of it. Probably not. “I really don’t, do I.”

“No, but I’m not…” Irving gestured at Little. “Like that.”

Des Voeux laughed shamelessly.

“Can we get back to work, please?” Little ran a hand over his face.

“You know, in Victorian times, Achillean men wore green carnations in their buttonholes,”5 Hodgson said in the tone of voice he affected during his lectures.

“They shoved flowers up their arses?” Des Voeux mocked him.

It went over Hodgson’s head. He shook his head. “No, no. Not bumholes. Buttonholes. They put them in their lapels.” He laced his fingers over the table. “It was meant to be a sign to other men that were also interested in men.”

“So it was a cruising thing?” Des Voeux said slyly.

Irving was avoiding looking at them. “If you’re going to start talking about the sex habits of those people, I don’t want to be here for it.”

Little snapped his laptop closed and stood up, the legs of his chair screeching against the floor. “I just remembered I left my charger in the cabin.” He grabbed his MacBook and tucked it under his arm. “Be right back.”

“Little,” Hodgson said, his tone conciliatory. “We did not mean to offend you.”

“Right, sure,” Little shot back as he turned around to leave.

As he slammed the door shut behind himself, he overheard Des Voeux say, “So, about making me co-author…”

Little leaned on the closed door and took a deep breath. He had to remind himself that he liked his labmates... most of the time, at least. It was only that the four of them could be like a dog with a bone when it came to teasing each other. He straightened up and was going to head back to his cabin, where he had, in fact, forgotten his charger, when he saw Jopson coming down the stairs. A small mountain of folders and binders were precariously balanced in his arms.

Jopson seemed happy to see him. “Good afternoon, Doctor Little.”

Little nodded his head at him in greeting, words stuck in his throat.

Jopson didn’t seem to mind his silence, as his smile only widened. He tried to hip-check the door open and as he did the notebook at the peak of his mountain of folders fell to the floor.

Little rushed to grab it. “Oh, let me…” He picked it up.

“Thank you,” Jopson said.

“Don’t mention it. Let me get that door for you,” Little said as he opened it.

Jopson entered the room. It was much like the one Little had just left: a desk, four chairs, and a whiteboard on one wall. Relaxingly nondescript. Jopson set his documents on the table and carefully placed his battered backpack on one of the chairs. Little stood at the entrance, unsure about whether he should follow him in or leave him to it. 

Thankfully Jopson seemed to take pity on his indecision. “You can leave that notebook on the table.”

“Right.” Little let the door close behind him and put the notebook down. He transferred his weight from one foot to the other. “Here for a meeting?” he asked, and mentally kicked himself for asking such a stupid question.

“Yes. Doctor Crozier and I have to look at some figures,” Jopson replied.

Jopson sat down on one of the chairs not occupied by his backpack. Was that an invitation to stay or a subtle way to tell him he should leave? Little hesitated, unsure about what to do, and froze up for a moment. Finally, he decided to be bold. He sat down opposite the other man.

Jopson grinned at him like he had gotten an answer right in a pub quiz. For a former gifted child and current overachiever like Little, there was no better feeling in the world than that.

“I’d assume he’d still be trying to get us all out of this ship. He seemed very agitated this morning,” Little observed as he placed the MacBook on the table.

“Oh, he did have me research the cost of renting a helicopter,” Jopson informed him, tone solemn. “Eventually it was decided that getting us back to the mainland would be prohibitively expensive. Since Doctor Crozier was unwilling to leave anyone behind, the plan was aborted.”

Little had no idea at all if he was joking. “I see.” He chewed on his bottom lip. “That’s... noble of him?”

Jopson seemed pleased by that answer. “Doctor Crozier is a rather special man.”

Little wondered what it’d be like to inspire that kind of loyalty in someone else. He was the most senior member of their lab, but most days Edward could count himself lucky if he managed to get a word in edgewise. Each of his team mates had their own quirks: Irving flew solo; Hodgson was an enigma best left undiscovered; Des Voeux… well, the least said about their intern, the better. 

“Do you truly believe that the situation is as bad as Silna said?” Little asked him.

“The paper Doctor Silna showed us was compelling,” Jopson admitted, slowly nodding his head, “and I trust Doctor Crozier’s judgement. How about you?”

Little shrugged. “It’s early to say.” 

"But you must have an opinion," Jopson insisted. "Do you think it will turn into a pandemic as they say?"

"Even if it does, it might not be so bad." He was going to leave it at that, but Jopson nodded encouragingly at him. “Remember the swine flu?”

“Vaguely,” Jopson admitted. “I was in secondary school back then. It was ten years ago or so, wasn’t it?”

“Give or take. I was an undergrad back then.” Little cast his mind back, trying to remember all the details. “Back then I was rooming with a medical student. He kept obsessively checking the news. He ended up dropping out a year later. He was too much of a hypochondriac.”

“Not the best trait if one is hoping to become a doctor,” Jopson said diplomatically.

Little laughed softly. “Yes. I remember he would rant for hours about the swine flu. The graphs he’d shove under my nose weren’t too different from the one Doctor Silna shared with us. Did you know it was related to the same virus that caused the Spanish Flu?”

Jopson leaned closer. “I didn’t.”

Little’s eyes went unfocused as he recalled that year. His roommate’s mental health had slowly deteriorated. He had gotten into the habit washing his hands compulsively. He had even started carrying with him a bottle of hand sanitizer!

Jopson watched him consideringly. “But in the end it wasn’t that bad.”

“Oh, it was.” Little frowned. “The WHO declared it a pandemic. But we got lucky. See, with most strains of the flu, mortality rates are higher among the elderly. But with this one older people were actually more likely to be immune, as they had been exposed to other strains of that virus.”

Jopson swallowed. “So this one killed mostly children.”

“Young and middle-aged adults as well, yes.” Edward rubbed his eyes. “People forget that hundreds of thousands of people died. But nowadays if you ask someone about the swine flu all they’ll tell you is that it was overhyped by the media.” 6

“Do you think that’s what will happen?” Jopson asked.

Little tried to meet his gaze, but found it overwhelming. He looked away, at Jopson’s backpack on the chair. There was a gash across the side of it, he realised. It had been cleverly sewn back together, but the thread was of a slightly darker shade of blue than the rest of the bag. Noticeable if you looked for it. 

“I honestly don’t know,” Little replied at last. “I think it can go either way at this point. Not to mention, we don’t know how accurate those figures are. The Chinese government isn’t exactly known for its transparency.”

“That’s true,” Jopson agreed, “but wouldn’t the CPC want to underplay the situation, then?”

Little winced. “That’s what worries me. But, as I said, it can go either way.” Jopson sat back. Edward felt like he was a sample being examined under a microscope. “What?”

Jopson was the one to hesitate this time. Little remembered how he had acted these past few weeks at the mess hall--that dry, understated humour of his, how he hinted at things rather than saying them outright. “I get the feeling that you’re not one to commit to an answer unless you’re completely certain it’s the correct one.”

Little arched his eyebrows. “Well, yes. That’s what the scientific method is about, isn’t it?”

A sphinx’s smile would have been less enigmatic than Jopson’s. “That’s a way to see it, Doctor.”

Edward didn’t know what to make of that. Was Jopson making fun of him?

Was he... _flirting with him_?

Tentatively, he asked, “And how do you see it, Jopson?”

Jopson shrugged. “Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and hope the ground is firm on the other side.”

Edward arched his eyebrows. “Should I be hoping the outbreak turns into a pandemic, then?”

Jopson chuckled. “Oh, I wasn’t really talking about the virus anymore, Doctor.”

Oh, crap. He was definitely flirting with him. Edward panicked. What now? They watched each other in silence for what felt like an eternity before the door of the meeting room opened.

“Jopson, guess who wrote me back,” said Doctor Crozier before dumping his own folders on the table. He paused as he saw Edward there. “Oh, hello, Doctor Little. I didn’t know you would be joining us for this meeting.”

Little stood up. He could recognize when he was being tactfully dismissed. “Oh, no, I was just discussing our conversation at breakfast with Jopson. I’ll be on my way.” 

“Don’t forget your computer,” Crozier said.

Little tucked his laptop back under his arm. “I’ll see you at dinner, I suppose.” He gave a small, pitiful wave to the pair before leaving the room.

*

“Can you believe him?” Fitzjames paced up and down his office like a caged cheetah, face just as thunderous.

Le Vesconte watched him from where they sat behind Fitzjames’ desk, their feet on the table. In their hand they had a mug of coffee made with one of the special roasts in James’ collection.

“James, please, take a seat. You’re making me dizzy,” they said.

James dropped on one of the chairs meant to be used by his visitors. It was a comfortable chair James had wanted his little office at the ship to feel welcoming to all who entered it. To that purpose, he had decorated it with little mementos: a framed photo of himself surrounded by children that had been taken during his volunteer work in the rainforest; a handmade rattle-drum gifted to him while he worked in rural China; an autographed copy of one of Al Gore’s books; a colourful feather from what used to be known as the Guano Islands; the Gold Play Button he’d been awarded by YouTube when his channel reached a million subscribers. 

All of these items were dear to him. They were deeply personal keepsakes, and all of them came with an interesting anecdote. James used to be so proud of this collection, but now he could only see them through Crozier’s eyes. He could imagine all too clearly what he’d think of them. How he’d sneer at the stories behind them. What he’d call James for sharing their tales: boastful, vain, a poseur.

A fraud.

“He’s been boycotting the trip from the very beginning, Dundy,” Fitzjames said. “He refuses to have his picture taken, scoffs at all the activities I suggest, won’t retweet our sponsor’s tweets… Do you know how many twitter followers he has?”

“I know he has less than you,” Le Vesconte tried to comfort him. “He isn’t even verified, is he?”

“Well, no.” James had been verified for nearly a year now. “But still, he seems to be mutuals with so many well-established researchers. I have no idea why, he’s such a miserable bastard, but his account is so popular. He even got retweeted by Neil deGrasse Tyson once!”

“No!” Le Vesconte said with mock shock.

James narrowed his eyes at them. “I can tell when I’m being mocked, you know. If you’re not here to support me I’m happy to take that cup of coffee from you.”

“I’ll behave, I’ll behave.” Dundy raised one hand in surrender and took a sip from their mug.

James sighed. “What I don’t understand is why he applied to be part of the expedition if he thinks so little of it.”

“Who knows?” Le Vesconte shrugged. “The real question is why was he accepted.”

James turned red. “The application review process--”

“Was a farce,” Le Vesconte interrupted him. “We both know you got the final say. So why did you accept his application?”

James squirmed. “I thought being part of the expedition might change his mind about…” He gestured vaguely. “Me.”

Le Vesconte lowered their feet. “Oh. Oh, James.”

“I know, I know.” James covered his face with his hands. “It’s so ridiculous, isn’t it. But between the twitter threads, the medium article, and that paper he wrote to debunk my theory, the man acts like he has a personal vendetta against me. Is it so wrong to want to be…”

“What?”

“Liked.” James swallowed. “It sounds so childish when I say it like that.”

“It’s not.” Dundy left the mug of coffee on the desk. They stood up and took a seat next to him. “It’s very human. But you can’t let him get to you like that, Jim.” They squeezed his knee. “You can’t give him that much power.”

“I know. I know.” James sighed.

Dundy’s hand slid up to palm at his inner thigh. “Let me get your mind off him.”

James considered it. He did need to relax, and Dundy was very talented. The two of them had known each other since their first year in university. The story of how they had met was one James always relished telling: it involved a rubber duck, a drunk skinhead, and an obscene amount of shaving cream. They had become friends immediately, and even though they had soon discovered that they weren’t suited to be each other’s romantic partner, they had found out that they could have a lot of fun together so long as they kept things casual.

“Oh, alright,” James said at last.

“Atta boy.” Dundy moved to kneel between his legs. With a twinkle in their eye, they added, “If you’re good I’ll even let you call me Francis.”

“Don’t push it,” James said, laughing.

Dundy undid the zipper of his jeans, and as James got lost in the wonders of that talented mouth of theirs, he spared one last thought for Doctor Crozier.

Cutting the expedition short because of some flu?

Hah.

Absurd.

\----

Footnotes:

1 Silna’s backstory is inspired by the work of a group of researchers that managed to get a sample of the Spanish Flu after exhuming an Inuk woman who had been buried in the Alaskan permafrost. You can read about it [here](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070702145610.htm).

Also, if you enjoy bad news, at least one team has proved that these viruses can still infect new hosts after being thawed. For example, you can [read](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/3/140303-giant-virus-permafrost-siberia-pithovirus-pandoravirus-science/) [here](https://www.pnas.org/content/111/11/4274) about a group of scientist that used a freshly-melted giant virus to infect an amoeba. Fun! [ ▲ ]

  
2 Pascal’s wager was an argument put forward by philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal. It posits that since there’s no way to know whether God exists or not, and since the consequence of not believing in them would be so terrible (=going to hell) if they did indeed exist, it’s in one’s best interest to believe in God. Or, failing that, to pretend that you do. 

Some academics have compared Pascal’s wager with the dilemma posed by climate change: since the consequences of not “believing” in it 2.1 would be so terrible, we might as well take steps to prevent it. 

As others before me have said, at worst we will have improved the world for nothing ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ [ ▲ ]

  
2.1 In as much as one needs to “believe” in something that has been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. [ ▲ ]

  
3 The real Irving was a math nerd. He won a silver medal in a mathematics competition once and was so proud of that accomplishment that the medal was retrieved from his grave. [ ▲ ]

  
4 I took the artistic license of turning Sophia into Franklin’s cousin rather than his niece. I needed to age her up so she’d be an established academic by the time Francis met her. [ ▲ ]

  
5 They did indeed! Reportedly Oscar Wilde asked some of his friends to wear a green carnation to the opening of Lady Windermere’s Fan and the rest is history. It’s not clear if he was the one to originate that tradition, but he certainly popularized it. [ ▲ ]

  
6 The swine flu and the Spanish flu were indeed related: they were caused by different strains of the H1N1 virus. 

When the swine flu hit, about 30% of people over 60 had some immunity to it as they had been exposed to other, less dangerous mutations of the H1N1 virus. That probably had a lot to do with why the 2009 pandemic ended up being less deadly than they expected: most of the people who got it were under 60 and thus better prepared to survive it. 

It’s unclear how many people died from the swine flu. The WHO initially claimed that the number was between 12,000 and 18,000, but a study done by the CDC later found that it must have been closer to [151,700-575,400 deaths](https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2012/06/cdc-estimate-global-h1n1-pandemic-deaths-284000). [ ▲ ]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a [tumblr](http://neurofancier.tumblr.com/), if you're into that.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	3. March 12 - part I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got a bit too long, so I had to split it in two.
> 
> Thanks as always to the fantastic [jbgyllen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jbgyllen) for betaing this chapter. All remaining mistakes are my own.

Crozier turned off his alarm. Through the wall, he could hear the muffled sounds of Jopson pottering about in their cabin’s bathroom. Unlike Francis himself, Jopson was a morning person. Instead of waking up with murderous intent and a personal vendetta against the world--as any decent person ought to--Jopson sprung every day out of bed fully awake and fresh as a rose. It was a detestable trait. Still, since they were now sharing a room, Crozier relished the fragile privacy this habit afforded him. At the beginning of the expedition, he had used these precious minutes to snooze, or reflect on the day, or check Twitter.

Now, however...

Crozier rolled onto his back and stared in silence at the ceiling above his head. His phone was charging on the bedside table. In the dusky darkness, he could see the outline of a lamp. 

The WHO had declared a pandemic yesterday.

He took his phone and unplugged it from the charger and told himself that he wouldn’t check the news. It was too early to deal with that. No, Crozier thought, what he would do was get up, get dressed, relieve himself, have breakfast, and only then he would visit the website which had quickly sneaked into his top 5 most visited pages.

From the cabin’s bathroom came the sound of flushing. Crozier’s resolve followed the same path as the contents of that toilet bowl. With a sigh, he unlocked his screen and tapped the first letter of that blasted website’s address. The page’s URL was the first to appear on the suggested list.

He scrolled through it. According to it, yesterday alone there had been 7,232 new cases and 330 deaths. The squiggly yellow line in the graph that represented the number of deaths continued to climb upwards, as steep as the brainchild of a demented roller coaster designer.

That thrice-damned virus showed no signs of stopping.

Crozier sighed.

He got out of bed.

*

Silna touched Goodsir’s shoulder and waited for her student to look at him. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

Goodsir looked back at Doctor Collins over his shoulder. The corpulent man was sitting alone at his table. His usual companions hadn’t arrived at the mess hall yet. Collins was on his phone, his expression distraught. 

‘His nephew is studying in Italy,’ he replied to her. ‘He’s in the hospital.’

Silna’s eyes widened. She held her left fist in front of her body, her right hand forming a halo behind it. Or, rather a crown. It was a sign that they hadn’t known before this month, but that they had had no choice but to learn. ‘Coronavirus?’

Goodsir nodded.

Silna sighed.

At his table, Doctor Collins hung up and pocketed his phone. For a few seconds he sat there, his expression forlorn. Then, he stood up and headed for the exit.

‘Go,’ she signed. She pushed Goodsir onto his feet. ‘Help him.’

‘I’m your translator,’ Goodsir protested, but she could see him sneaking glances at the door behind which Collins had disappeared.

‘Go,’ she repeated.

Goodsir thanked her and followed the man.

Silna was not in the habit of getting involved in other people’s business, but she knew Henry was. Her student’s capacity for empathy was as inextinguishable as it was ridiculous. It baffled Silna, whose own capacity for sympathy had been greatly reduced by a lifetime surrounded by idiots. Henry, on the other hand, had managed to preserve his naivety despite repeated high-speed collisions with reality. It was either admirable or stupid.

Let him go help Doctor Collins.

He’d be useless until he did, anyway.

The chairs around her slowly filled with people. She watched them exchange words with each other. Crozier struggled to clumsily translate for her. Francis had always been better at talking her language than at translating to it. Eventually, she waved him off and focused on the men’s lips, trying to read them. They seemed to be discussing the declarations of the British prime minister.

  
“At the--said ‘--families--lose loved ones--’,” Silna managed to read Jopson’s lips.

“Spain has--,” the man that talked too much replied. “Like Italy.”

“--deaths,” Crozier said. “--catastrophe--don’t act now.”

The biblehumper--yes, Henry, she did mean _humper_ rather than _thumper_ \--said something that she couldn’t understand. The man with the cow eyes replied to him. Wherever she looked people were gesticulating, their hands moving in the air, but saying nothing. Around her was a catalogue of human emotions: surprise, disbelief, confusion, anger, skepticism, worry, indifference, fear.

Goodsir returned halfway through breakfast, Collins nowhere in sight. She arched her eyebrows at him questioningly as he sat down.

‘His nephew is alive but in critical condition. Collins went back to his cabin. He said he was tired,’ he told her, and then stopped signing to look at something behind him. Silna followed his gaze to see that Doctor Fitzjames and the Dickhead had stood up. ‘Doctor Franklin is saying that there will be an assembly in the conference room after breakfast,’ Goodsir explained.

‘Are they cancelling the expedition?’ she asked him.

Goodsir listened to them for a few seconds and then shook his head. ‘They’re not telling us yet.’

Silna cupped her hands around her mug of coffee and watched the room in silence.

*

“They say some people get the runs, too,” Morfin said, crouching lower to be face to face with Stanley. “Is that true?”

Stanley--who was a _medical_ doctor as well as the holder of a PhD, as he liked to remind everyone--sighed. “I don’t know, Morfin.” He stirred his porridge listlessly. “As I told you, I haven’t had the chance to read anything on SARS-CoV-2 yet.”

“But could it happen?” Morfin insisted.

Morfin was part of the ship’s crew. Even James, who made a point of being genial with everyone, found him slightly unsettling. He looked like an apparition. Like something more at home in an old sailor’s folk tales. You didn’t expect to encounter him by the cereal bar, filling his bowl with cheerios.

Or standing by your breakfast table, for that matter.

“I suppose. Everything is possible,” Stanley replied.

Fitzjames took pity on them both. He leaned closer to the man standing by their table. “Mister Morfin, perhaps you could discuss this after breakfast? I’m sure you’ll feel better after you eat something.”

“I don’t know about that, Doctor. Last time I tried to eat I ended up throwing it all back up. The vomit was really strange, too. It looked like…” Morfin glanced down at Stanley’s food. “Now that I think about it, it looked a lot like that bowl of porridge.”

Stanley paused, spoon halfway to his mouth. He lowered it back down and pushed the bowl away from him. “I believe Doctor McDonald would be better suited to help you.”

Morfin hesitated and looked at Fitzjames for support. James did his best approximation of a smile. “Yes, McDonald would be a safer bet.”

“Alright then.” Morfin straightened up, his joints creaking worryingly. “See you around, then.”

The man waddled away.

Stanley wiped his mouth with his napkin. “I don’t think I’ll be able to eat one more bite after that charming exchange, so I might as well head for the conference room early. Gentlemen.” He nodded his head at Franklin and Fitzjames and headed out of the mess hall.

Now Fitzjames and Franklin were the only two people left at the table. James watched John, trying to gain some insight into what was going through his mind. Morfin hadn’t been the only one to approach them that breakfast; no less than eight people had come up to them at different points, trying to find out what would become of the expedition. Franklin had responded to all of them with his usual affability.

“You’ll find out soon,” Franklin had told all of them, an impenetrable smile on his lips, and then had refused to elaborate until each one of them had eventually given up and left.

Fitzjames wondered if John was about to do the same thing to him. 

James cleared his throat. “Doctor Franklin,” he started. “I was wondering what our sponsors said when you called them last night.”

“Don’t worry, James.” Franklin patted his hand. “All is well.”

“All is well,” Fitzjames repeated, trying to prompt the man to keep talking. Franklin continued eating his yoghurt. “I assume then that our sponsors have called the expedition off, then?”

“You’ll find out soon enough!” Franklin smiled in that way that made one feel like they were in on the secret.

Only Fitzjames was not, in fact, in on the secret. He was, however, starting to get frustrated.

“Right,” James said dryly. “But since I will be speaking with you at the assembly, I have to know what we’re going to say.”

Franklin arched his eyebrows. “Do you truly need to know about it beforehand to support me?”

Fitzjames realized that, back when the man had first become his advisor, that statement would have worked.

“Franklin, please,” Fitzjames pleaded. “As your friend, humor me. What did our sponsor say?”

Franklin gave him a disappointed look. James had to resist the impulse to apologize and tell him that it was okay, that he didn’t need to tell him. He stood his ground. 

Franklin folded his napkin carefully and set it down on the table. “Alright, I’ll tell you. Our sponsor said that they haven’t decided yet.”

“They haven’t--” Fitzjames blinked. “But there has been talk of imposing travel bans. John, what will happen to us if we can’t go home?”

“Oh, I’m not worried about that.” Franklin waved his hand dismissively. “We can ask the local coast guard to bring us fuel, and I discussed the matter of food yesterday with our caterers. We have enough food to last us at least six months.”

Fitzjames’ eyes widened. “Six months?” 

Doctor Hickey, who had been passing by them, shot him a look, likely having overheard him. 

James lowered his voice. “We can’t spend six months at sea, Doctor Franklin. The expedition was supposed to end in two weeks. These people have families and jobs to go back to.”

“Don’t be so negative, James!” Franklin said. “Think of this as a great adventure! Who knows, maybe in a few months you will be on stage somewhere, giving a TED talk about this experience!”

This wasn’t as comforting as it should be. Fitzjames leaned back against his chair, feeling like he desperately needed the spinal support just in case he fainted. “The others will not like this.”

Crozier’s reaction alone would be bad enough. Fitzjames could imagine his sneering face, the disdain in his eyes as took them to task for not having listened to him sooner. James would rather quite literally jump ship and attempt to swim back to England.

“Oh, don’t be like that. I’m sure they’ll see the bright side of it!” Franklin said cheerfully.

Fitzjames stared at him in mute disbelief. “How could they possibly?”

“Why, because you’ll be there with me to tell them! You’ve always been such a great orator. It’s one of your best qualities, I think.” Franklin ate one last spoonful of yogurt. “Alright, all done. Shall we go?”

Fitzjames was struck by the urge to hide under the table. But he had not gotten where he had by rolling over and showing his belly at the first sign of trouble. 

He nodded. “Yes. Let’s go.”

*

“Is this seat taken?”

Peglar stood by his chair, a soft smile on his lips that Bridgens couldn’t help but match. “Be my guest.”

Peglar took a seat next to him. They were nearly at the back. Bridgens himself had been one of the last to arrive at the conference room, since cleaning up after breakfast was one of his tasks. By the time he had gotten here, there hadn’t been too many chairs left. He had seen a couple of them closer to the stage, but he had wanted to sit by a free chair, hoping that--

Well, that Harry would do as he had done

“This place is so crowded,” Harry said, looking around. “Everyone must be here by now.”

“Very nearly,” Bridgens agreed. “It’s just like back at the Beagle.”

Peglar laughed, no doubt remembering their former Captain: a man with the face of an emperor tamarin and the intelligence of a flea, whose idea of leadership was bothering his crew with endless meetings like this one.

Harry’s warm eyes still crinkled at the corners when he laughed, Bridgens noticed. In another ship--in another life--Harry’s eyes had been his compass. Life aboard a ship was frenetic and tedious, crowded and lonely. It hadn’t always been easy to find time to be together. It had made each stolen moment between them all the more precious for it. Years later, when he found himself unable to sleep, he still lulled himself to sleep thinking of Harry: his voice as he read out loud to him, his messy hair first thing in the morning, his moans of ecstasy right before he reached his peak.

Every seaman had a stockpile of memories to keep them afloat at sea. Peglar was in all of Bridgens’.

But their contract at the Beagle had come to an end, as all things did. They hadn’t been able to find employment in the same ship and so, unwilling to subject each other to the heartbreak of seeing each other only once or twice a year, they had put an end to their relationship.  
Before saying their goodbyes, Bridgens had gifted Harry with one of the books of poems they used to read together. On the first page he had written a stanza he had one recited to him as they laid in bed, half asleep:

> _How should we like it were stars to burn_  
>  _With a passion for us we could not return?_  
>  _If equal affection cannot be,_  
>  _Let the more loving one be me._ 1

When he had read those verses, Harry’s eyes had filled with tears. He had kissed Bridgens, called him an idiot, and then had kissed him again. 

“It’s going to take me a little time, too,” he had confessed, his voice very quiet.

Bridgens shook his head. This was not the time for nostalgia. “How are you liking that book I recommended to you?”

“You were right... it’s not a light book,” Peglar said.

“Yes, Blindness is one of Saramago’s most direct books, to put it mildly,” Bridgens agreed.

“It’s brutal. But…” Harry paused. Bridgens nodded, trying to instill him with the confidence he needed to voice his opinion, “It’s not as bleak as I thought it’d be. The way the doctor’s wife stays with him.them, the relationship between the man with the eyepatch and the girl with the dark glasses… even in the middle of a catastrophe, there’s still love. There’s still hope.”

“There always is,” Bridgens said softly.

As the meeting began, Peglar turned to face Franklin. Bridgens gripped at the edges of his seat until the desire to take Harry’s hand in his own subsided.

*

Gibson climbed up the stairs, mop on his shoulder. With every step the bucket full of water he was carrying bumped against his thigh, contributing to his bad mood. This was so typical, he thought. Of course, he was going to be one of the only ones to miss the assembly. He’d have to ask Manson what had been said during the meeting, and Manson wasn’t exactly a reliable source. Still, he was better than Armitage, who would take any chance to tell you about his “epic” Call of Duty squad. 

Fucking Navy Seal wannabe.

When he had accepted this job, Billy only wanted to get out of the cruise ship circuit. He was tired of screaming children peeing on the floor, finding floaters in the pool, and people getting drunk on too many margaritas and throwing up all over the deck.

A scientific expedition had sounded so sophisticated compared to that. Doctors were supposed to be civilized people, were they not? Academic types spent their entire lives stuck in dark rooms reading boring books, and what was worse, they did it _on purpose_. Billy had been sure they’d spend the entire expedition holed up in their cabins, giving him plenty of time to catch up on his Reddit trolling.

Alas, he hadn’t counted on one of the crewmen being prone to puking.

“Fucking _Morfin_ ,” he grumbled to himself.

He opened the door to the bridge. Officer Tozer was the only one in sight: he was sitting as far away as possible from the puddle of vomit on the ground, a paper towel held over his nose to block the smell.

“Are you here to clean that?” Tozer asked him, nodding down at what had once been the contents of Morfin’s stomach.

Gibson set the bucket down on the floor. “Yessir.”

“Great. I’m going to get a cup of coffee.” Tozer stood up. “Call me if anything needs my attention.”

Gibson sighed. “Yes, sir.”

The man left, closing the door behind him.

“Could have cleaned it yourself with those paper towels,” Gibson grumbled as he dipped the mop in the bucket. “Cup of coffee, my arse, he’s probably at the assembly by now.”

It seemed like no matter where he was, he was doomed to cleaning people’s bodily fluids.

At least it was mindless work. He scrubbed at the floor, his mind occupied with fantasies of crashing the ship against an iceberg. Gibson was reaching the climax of this fantasy, which involved being flown to safety on a helicopter piloted by a shirtless Petyr Baelish, when he heard a scratching sound--like something scraping at a metallic object.

Gibson frowned. He rested the mop on the wall and followed the source of the noise. It seemed to come from the door that led to the stairs to the lower deck. Was Tozer having some trouble finding the keyhole? Gibson yanked the door open. Only it wasn’t Tozer on the other side, but a redhead man with sharp features. Billy had barely a second to catch sight of the lock picks he held in his hands before the man was pocketing them away.

“What the hell are you doing,” Billy said, his tone so dry that the words were barely a question.

The man smiled as if he hadn’t just been caught trying to break into the bridge.

“Seems like I got lost on my way to the conference room. What room is this, again?” he said, and tried to look over Billy’s shoulder. Seeing as he was a good head shorter than Gibson, it was a lost battle. 

Billy was not impressed. “Really. That’s the lie you’re going with?”

The man raised a vape pen out to his lips and took a puff of it. Twin plumes of cotton-candy scented smoke came out of his nostrils. “Why would it be a lie? You know what mathematicians are like. Always stuck in their heads.” He tapped his own temple. “Could have wandered here by accident.”

Gibson snorted. “You’re not a mathematician.”

The redhead seemed delighted to be challenged. “How would you know that?”

Gibson considered the man before him. Those intelligent blue eyes peered back at him. Billy was reminded of that bartender he had dated years ago. The man had had a quote tattooed across his forearm: ‘ _If you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you._ ’

Gibson always found it unbelievably pretentious.

Billy took a step closer to him. The redhead lifted his chin. Gibson reached into the front pocket of the man’s jeans, feeling the warmth of his skin through the denim. The impish smirk on the man’s face grew. 

Billy fished the lock picks out of the man’s pocket. “Do all mathematicians carry these around?”

He shrugged. “So? I’m a mathematician with a hobby.”

“What’s a Friedman number?2" Gibson tossed him the lock picks.

He caught them in the air. “A number that can be represented with an operation that uses all its digits.”

Gibson rolled his eyes. “You only know that because it was on the front page of Reddit last week.”

“Do I?” He rocked on his heels, looking very satisfied with himself.

Billy really shouldn’t find that so charming. 

“What’s your name?”

“Cornelius Hickey,” Hickey replied. “What’s yours?”

“Billy,” he replied. “Billy Gibson. No lies this time, Cornelius. What are you doing up here? Everyone else is at the assembly.”

Cornelius chuckled. “Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? Everyone is down there, getting the same history from Franklin and his lapdog. There’s no interest in knowing the same thing as everyone else. If there’s something worth finding out about, it must be happening where no one’s looking.”

“I’m here, though,” Billy pointed out. His eyes moved up and down Hickey’s slim body. “Looking.”

“Then that makes you the most interesting person on this ship, doesn’t it?” He reached up to adjust the collar of Billy’s overalls. His fingers were calloused. He smelt like spun sugar and aftershave. “How about you give me a tour of the control room?”

“It’s called the ‘bridge.’” He corrected him.

“See? You’re teaching me new things already.” Hickey’s smile widened until his eyes were almost closed. He stood on his toes to whisper in his ear, “You’re a natural.”

What the hell, Gibson thought. It beat scrubbing vomit off the deck.

*

The assembly wasn’t going well. As expected, Crozier was leading the charge against Franklin, but the rest of academics and crew members were not holding back, either. A cacophony of voices screaming to be heard bounced off the walls of the room. On the stage next to Franklin and James, Captain Hartnell was desperately trying to get his crew under control. James had never seen a more terrifying crowd, and he had once faced off a dozen lumberjacks armed with chainsaws while chained to a giant sequoia. 

“Gentlemen. Gentlemen, please.” Doctor Franklin raised his hands placatingly. Doctor Silna threw him a paper ball. It bounced off Franklin’s head. “...and ladies.”

“Doctor…” James started.

“Yes, yes, and esteemed non-binary people,” Franklin hastily added. “Please, be reasonable! Our sponsor is only asking us for more time. You must understand, the situation is affecting everyone. Why, just today they had to halt their production in Canada because a worker tested positive in one of their factories3. We must give them time to adjust, but I assure you they’re all working overtime to find a solution.”

“They’re furloughing seven hundred employees!” someone yelled from his chair, waving his phone in the air as proof.

“I’m sure none of those people are involved in the expedition. They’re probably just factory operators,” Franklin replied.

“This is ridiculous,” Crozier rumbled, his thunderous voice loud enough to cut through the noise. “It’s been nearly two weeks since you were asked to cut the expedition short! If you had contacted them back then, we could all be evacuated and safely in our homes!”

“Francis,” Franklin sighed with the air of one dealing with a spoiled child. Even Fitzjames could tell this was a bad move. “If you would only listen to me for a minute, you would understand that--”

“We’ve listened to enough of your excuses!” Crozier snapped, jumping from his seat in anger. He marched his way to the stage and climbed atop it clumsily. “We need to talk directly with our sponsor and demand a solution.”

James needed to deescalate the situation. Approaching Crozier from behind, James spoke softly, as if to a dangerous animal: “Doctor Crozier, please…”

“You are going too far!” Franklin drew himself to his full height and glared at Crozier down his nose. “I will _not_ have you undermine my authority!”

“Doctor Crozier--” Fitzjames repeated, just as Crozier turned around in a fury, no doubt ready to give one of his impassioned speeches.

James couldn’t dodge his elbow in time.

Everything went white. His eyes watered.

He took a step back, the world tilting on its axis, and slipped off the stage.

The room went silent.

James blinked up at the ceiling. His nose throbbed. He instinctively covered it with his hand, and found it wet and warm.

On the stage, Franklin stood still, mouth twisted downwards in a way that reminded Fitzjames of a giant river otter.

Crozier filled his field of vision as he knelt next to him. “Are you alright, lad?”

His eyes were blue. James had known that, of course, but this up close he could see there was a stormy grey ring around the pupil.

He must have a concussion if he was noticing that, James thought.

“I’m fine,” James said, “caught me by surprise, that’s all.”

“I didn’t see you behind me.” Did Francis look sorry? “How’s your nose? Let me see.” Francis gently took James’ hand and moved it away from his face.

James licked his lips. They tasted like iron. “Is it broken?”

Francis reached out to touch it; James braced himself for pain, but the touch was careful and light. “I’ll let the doctors confirm, but it doesn’t look like it.” An amused smile appeared on his face. “Worry not, James. Your handsome face won’t be ruined.”

For once, James didn’t feel like he was the butt of Crozier’s joke. He snorted with laughter--and then winced as that made the throbbing pain worse. “Ouch.”

“Careful there. Can you stand?” Crozier helped him up, one hand on the small of his back, the other holding his forearm.

Morfin, who had been standing nearby, took a look at the blood covering his face and promptly fainted.

“Man down!” someone called out.

“I think we better cover that before we scare anyone else off,” Crozier said, offering him a fabric handkerchief. “Here.”

James took it. Through the scent of blood, he caught a faint whiff of lavender.

By then, Goodsir and Doctor McDonald had reached them. McDonald knelt by Morfin and took his pulse, while Goodsir inspected his nose.

In a matter of seconds, McDonald and Captain Hartnell were carrying Morfin while Goodsir guided James out of the room.

Crozier followed them.

*

“Your pupils are responsive,” Goodsir said, turning off the little flashlight. “Your reflexes are normal, and so is your balance. Any pain?”

Crozier, feeling guilt over having accidentally elbowed James’ nose, sat in the corner to observe the examination. Morfin was laying on one of the stretchers, awake, but still unsteady. McDonald was putting a cold compress on the man’s forehead.

“Only what’s expected after falling off a stage,” James replied, rubbing the back of his head. His voice sounded more nasal than usual, as twin cotton balls had been shoved up his nostrils.

Goodsir sat down on the stool. “In that case, my professional opinion is that you’re not concussed.”

To Crozier’s confusion, James looked at Francis before saying, “Are you certain about that, Doctor Goodsir?”

“Yes, I don’t believe there’s evidence to point towards a concussion. What do you think, Doctor McDonald?”

McDonald took his latex gloves off and turned around to face them. “I agree. Everything seems to be in order. I’d recommend someone keeps an eye on you in case you get dizzy but you should be alright.”

“Is there anyone who can keep you company?” Goodsir asked.

“I could do it,” Crozier volunteered. “It’s the least I can do since my elbow is to blame for your fall.”

“It’s alright,” Fitzjames rushed to say. “I’ll ask Dundy. Thank you.”

Crozier did his best to not feel offended.

He didn’t do a very good job of it.

“Then that’ll be al, since I’m afraid I don’t have any lollipops to give away,” Goodsir joked, with that apologetic smile of his.

Fitzjames laughed. “That’ll be okay. Thanks, Henry.”

James hopped off the stretcher. Crozier was going to follow him out of the infirmary when the door burst open.

Silna was on the other side, breathing heavily. ‘Franklin left.’

Blanky stumbled into the room, his long hair sticking to his forehead with sweat. “Let me sit,” he said. “I ran all the way here.” Blanky plopped down on the chair and rubbed at his knee with a wince. ‘Did you tell them?’

Silna nodded.

‘What’s happening?’ Fitzjames’ hands moved haltingly through the signs.

‘Franklin left the ship,’ Silna replied.

James squinted. “Who left the ship?”

“That’s the sign for ‘Doctor Franklin’,” Goodsir explained.

“It’s… very similar to the sign for ‘Dickhead’,” Fitzjames noted.

Goodsir blushed, lips pressed together in a thin line.

“Nevermind that!” Crozier grumbled. ‘Silna, did you say Franklin abandoned the ship?’

She nodded. ‘We saw a coast guard boat approach ours. Franklin boarded it. He was still in it when we left.’

Crozier looked at Fitzjames for an explanation. 

James shook his head. “He did say that he was trying to contact the local authorities, but last I heard of it, he hadn’t had any success.”

A cold dread was creeping up Crozier’s spine. ‘It seems like he managed it at last.’ He took a deep breath. ‘We have to find out what he’s up to.’

Silna nodded. She grabbed Goodsir by the arm and ran off with him, McDonald close behind them.

“You go ahead,” Blanky said, waving off Crozier’s attempts at helping him off the chair.

“Blanky…” Crozier protested.

“Go!” Blanky insisted. “You two are the only ones he’ll listen to if he’s doing something daft.”

Seeing as John made a habit of ignoring everything that came out of Francis’ mouth for the past few decades, Crozier doubted that the statement was true. Still, Fitzjames and himself rushed down the long corridors and up the stairs until they reached the upper deck. A small crowd had gathered already. Crozier pushed his way to the front, where Little and Jopson were using the zoom of the former’s camera to look at a coast guard boat. Franklin had indeed boarded it. On the screen of Little’s phone Crozier saw him talk with its occupants--two men in uniform. It seemed like they were catching the tail end of a conversation.

“Come on,” Fitzjames was saying next to him. He had his own phone to his ear. “Come on, John, pick up, don’t do this to me.”

Franklin shook hands with the men.

Then, one of them stepped behind the helm.

The boat’s engines roared to life. It began to manoeuvre away. 

Leaving in its wake only a trail of foaming seawater, the boat disappeared beyond the horizon.

# Footnotes 

1 From Auden’s [The More Loving One](https://poets.org/poem/more-loving-one). [ ▲ ]

2 A Friedman number is a number that can be obtained by combining all its digits (and ONLY its digits) with the basic arithmetic operations (+, −, ×, ÷), additive inverses, parentheses, exponentiation, and concatenation. 

For example, 126 is a Friedman number because it can be expressed as 6×21. 

They’re more of a fun little brain teaser than an Useful Math Concept(TM), but in the words of Marge Simpson, “I just think they're neat."[ ▲ ]

3 One of the Canadian factories of the sponsor-that-must-not-be-named did have to halt production on March 12th after a worker tested positive for Covid-19, which was one hell of a coincidence, as I had already decided to set this chapter on that day before I found out. However they didn’t furlough any workers until late April. Consider that an artistic license.[ ▲ ]


	4. March 12 - part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was betaed by the lovely [tulliolaciceronis](https://www.archiveofourown.org/users/tulliolaciceronis/), who made some excellent suggestions! All remaining mistakes are my own.
> 
> I want to thank you all for all the love and support this fic has been getting.
> 
> I live in one of the cities that was most affected by the first wave. I lost a family member to the virus. At the worst of the lockdown, when I hadn’t seen another soul in weeks, I had two things to keep me going: the collection of hand sanitizer bottles I had been hoarding since 2009, and my stupid sense of humour.
> 
> When I started writing this story I wanted to capture that same sense of humour. The world is a scary and absurd place. We have very little control over it… but at least we can make fun of it.
> 
> As the second wave begins, I hope this story helps you the way toilet paper memes helped me.
> 
> Thanks for reading <3

“I can’t believe he would do that,” Fitzjames said for the millionth time.

“I can,” was Crozier’s laconic reply.

The two of them were sitting on the couch in Fitzjames’ office. They had gravitated there after all of Fitzjames’ attempts to call Franklin had failed, trying to escape the panicked questions of academics and crewmembers.

Fitzjames rubbed his eyes, frustrated. “I know you don’t think much of him, but Franklin is--” he paused and took his phone out of his pocket. It vibrated a second time in his hands. “He texted me.”

Crozier sat up. “Franklin?”

“Yes!” Fitzjames unlocked his phone. “It says, ‘Saw your missed calls. This place’s coverage is terrible,’ and then there’s a second text, ‘Shall we have a “video-conference” in 5?’”

Crozier squinted at the screen. He put his reading glasses on. “Is that an honest to God SMS? Who the hell sends those in 2020?”

“He does.” Fitzjames stood up and sat behind his desk. “He doesn’t understand WhatsApp.”

“What about Messenger? Line? Telegram?” Crozier frowned. How the hell were there so many companies with exactly the same business model? But nevermind that. Fitzjames had turned on his computer and was typing something. “What are you doing?”

“John’s phone doesn’t have any apps that can be used to make a video call1,” he explained. “I’ll have to teach him how to open a hangout meeting. It’s going to take a while.”

“But I’ve had video calls with him in the past,” Crozier protested.

“Either Young or I would set up the call for him,” Fitzjames replied.

“Young?”

Fitzjames looked at him, his face tired. “David Young. One of his interns. Young and I take turns.”

Dreading the answer, Crozier asked, “What about the video calls he does from home? Or on weekends?”

Fitzjames stared at him in silence.

“Jesus Christ.” Crozier took his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose. He wanted to start ranting about fucking Franklin and his fucking habit of acting like he was entitled to other people’s labour. But he wasn’t sure Fitzjames would be able to handle that right now. “Alright, I’ll--I’ll go find the captain while you do that. He should be involved in this conversation.”

“Yes, good idea,” Fitzjames replied as he typed something on his phone.

Crozier left the office and closed the door behind himself. Then he took his phone out and opened the Twitter app.

Just because he couldn’t rant in front of Fitzjames it didn’t mean he couldn’t rant at all.

> **Francis Crozier, PhD @frmcrozier · Mar 12**
> 
> We need to talk about how the way professors rely on their teams to do their grunt work for them negatively impacts their subordinates’ chances of getting tenure. (1/?)

A couple of minutes later, all ranted out and feeling much calmer, he headed for the bridge.

*

When he returned with Captain Hartnell, Fitzjames had just finished setting up the video call. Crozier arrived just in time to see Doctor Franklin’s face appear on the laptop’s screen.

It was upside down.

“Hello, James,” Franklin greeted Fitzjames jovially, then frowned as he saw Crozier standing next to him. “Oh. Hello, Francis.”

Crozier wanted to reach inside the screen and throttle him.

“Captain Hartnell is also here,” Fitzjames turned the laptop enough to reveal the man. “We thought it’d be important to involve him in this conversation.”

“Since you didn’t involve us in your decision to fuck off to God-knows-where,” Crozier grumbled under his breath. His voice mustn’t have been quiet enough, because Fitzjames shot him a _look_.

“Yes, good idea,” Franklin said, “Before we begin, do you have any idea why you’re upside down?”

“Oh God.” Crozier debated the merits of banging his head against the wall.

“Try turning your phone around,” Fitzjames proposed, proving once again that he had more patience than Crozier.

“Oh! Yes! That’s much better!”

“Doctor,” Captain Hartnell said. “I think I speak on behalf of the entire crew when I say we really need to know what is going on.”

“Yes, yes,” Franklin nodded slowly. “I suppose the whole thing must have seemed rather odd to all of you. Of course, I would have explained everything before leaving, but time was of the essence. You see--” the image became blurry for a moment as Franklin tried to sit down and ended up dropping the phone. His face reappeared a few seconds later. “Oh, much better. As I was saying, I finally managed to get in touch with the local coast guard. James knew I was trying to do that.”

Fitzjames didn’t seem impressed by this attempt at dodging responsibility. “You failed to mention that you planned to leave with them.”

“Well, I wasn’t,” Franklin conceded. “But I had to improvise. They only had room for one person in their boat.”

Crozier reviewed his memory of said boat and determined that this was complete bullshit.

“And so, since we were having so much trouble getting in touch with our sponsors,” Franklin continued, “I made an executive decision.” His chest swelled with righteous pride. “I decided it’d be easier to contact them from the mainland, and asked these gentlemen--” the image went blurry once again as Franklin aimed his phone at the two men. They were sitting at a table, playing cards by the look of it. “--to take me there. So as you see, it was all part of my plan to get us all home.”

“How convenient that your plan leaves us marooned at sea while you get to return to England!” Crozier snapped.

Franklin sighed. “Francis--”

“Don’t ‘Francis’ me!” Crozier pointed an accusing finger at the computer screen with the same intent of a man pointing a gun at someone.

All the anger, all the years of resentment between them were now too close to the surface to ignore. Francis wanted to yell at him. Demand an apology for Sophia, for the way the university’s administration treated him, for a thousand slights that were not, technically, Franklin’s fault, but that John had somehow always managed to make worse.

Unflappable, Franklin replied with his same old geniality. “Francis, really, there’s no need to get so angry,” he said, full of fatherly concern. “Anyway, I’d love to stay and chat, but I have to go. I’m getting a phone call from our sponsor.”

“No you’re not, you bloody liar--!” Crozier started, but the screen had gone dark. Francis had to remind himself that he was much too old to punch the walls in frustration. Instead, he crossed his arms. “Damn him. Damn him to hell,” he muttered. “You know we can’t count on him to help us out, right?”

He’d been prepared to argue with Fitzjames, but the man simply took a deep breath and said, “I know, Francis.”

Crozier was stunned into silence.

Fitzjames pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes. “From now on we might as well assume we’re on our own. Alright.” He stood up. “I suggest we sail to the nearest island and make accommodations to send everyone home from there. It will be expensive, but we can invoice our sponsor.”

“About that,” the captain said. “There’s something you should know. I had discussed it with Doctor Franklin, but considering what just happened,” he gestured at Fitzjames’ screen, “I’m starting to suspect he didn’t share this news with you.”

“What is it?” Fitzjames asked him.

Captain Hartnell squared his shoulders. “Our sponsor stopped paying for our fuel last week.”

“What,” Crozier said, voice flat.

“Doctor Franklin promised to sort it out, and our own company is also trying to find out what happened,” the captain explained, “but if you ask me, I suspect this is a prelude to them terminating the contract early.”

“They can do that? Oh, what am I saying? Of course they can. They put some abusive clause in the contract that allowed for it, didn’t they.” Fitzjames sat back down. “Okay. What are our options, Captain?”

“Before Doctor Crozier came to find me, I got in touch with the port authority at the nearest island,” Hartnell explained. “They were willing to bring us enough fuel to keep the ship running, but not enough to sail back to England, and they forbid us from setting foot in their territory. I’ve been trying to find a port within sailing range willing to let us land, but so far all have refused. They were worried we might spread the infection to them.”

“How on Earth would we do that? None of us have been in touch with anyone but the people in this ship for weeks!” Crozier said.

“I told them that, but I suspect they didn’t believe us,” Hartnell said.

Exhausted, Crozier sat down at the other side of the desk. “Can’t say I blame them. I wouldn’t believe us, either.”

“Neither would I. Cruise lines aren’t exactly known for caring about how they affect the locals’ lives,” Hartner remarked. “I’m going to organize a second assembly. I want to let everyone aboard know what’s the situation and what we’re doing to solve it.”

Fitzjames was silent for a few seconds, seemingly deep in thought. When he finally stood up, there was something different about him.

“Yes,” he said, “I think that would be best. Captain, if you’re amenable, I’d like to make this announcement with you. I want to take responsibility for this. As Franklin’s second, it’s the least I can do.”

“The members of the expedition will appreciate it,” Hartnell said. “Thank you, Doctor Fitzjames.”

The captain said his goodbyes before marching out of the office, leaving Crozier alone with Fitzjames.

Fitzjames sat back down. “I should prepare something to say. Thank you for your help today, Francis.”

“My pleasure,” Crozier said automatically.

He knew that this was his cue to leave, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He stayed where he was, sitting in front of Fitzjames, one desk and a years-old feud the only thing separating them. And yet when Crozier looked at Fitzjames he no longer saw Franklin’s sycophant, or the vacuous influencer who seemed to care more about likes than about having a coherent message to deliver. He was reminded of James as he had first thought of him, when he had used to follow the man’s blog all those years ago, before Fitzjames got famous.

That was why he decided to say something he’d likely come to regret. “Let me help you,” Crozier said.

Fitzjames looked at him, startled. Well, it was too late to back out now.

“You’re currently responsible for a couple dozen angry academics,” Crozier pointed out. “It’s too much work for one person to handle alone. Whatever you’re thinking of doing next, let me lend you a hand.”

Fitzjames didn’t reply, at first. Crozier started to fear that his help was about to be rejected, and had to bite his tongue to keep himself from lashing out at the man in anger.

Finally, James said, “Thank you, Francis. I’d like that very much.”

*

The sun disappeared below the horizon. Above the tranquil sea, the sky was aflame with every shade from crimson to violet. It was a paradise-bird-choreography sort of sunset. A first-year-at-art-school twilight. An astronomical event with something to prove.

It was completely wasted on Thomas.

Jopson stood on the deck, his elbows on the railing, gazing at this love letter from God without really seeing it. His phone was pressed to his ear, his brother’s voice on the other end of the line.

“But they can’t keep you there,” Jack said. “That’s illegal.”

Jopson had just told his brother about that day’s second assembly, and the news that their sponsor had abandoned their ship in the middle of the ocean. To his shame, Jack’s disbelief felt perversely good--Thomas couldn’t bring himself to be surprised by the world’s injustices, but someone ought to be.

Thomas had worked hard to preserve Jack’s faith in a fair world. It had been done largely at the expense of his own. Still, if given the chance, he’d make the same choices all over again.

“There was a clause in our contract,” Thomas explained. “We can’t even complain about it on social media, although some of the passengers have done it. I expect they must have gotten cease and desist letters by now.”

PR teams always worked faster than the people tasked with solving the problems they were trying to cover for.

Jopson still remembered how quickly the circus’s PR team had contacted them after his mother’s accident, the NDAs they’d had to sign before receiving their settlement.

On the horizon, the sun was a sphere of incandescent molten iron, descending into the ink-dark waters. The artificer of the celestial event increased the saturation of the colours of the sky by 30%. Jopson turned his back to the whole thing.

“But someone must be doing something about it,” Jack insisted.

“They are.” Thomas leaned back against the railing. “Doctor Crozier is working with Doctor Fitzjames and the captain to find a solution.”

Jopson had approached his advisor after the second assembly, offering to lend him a hand, but the doctor had taken a look at his face and had shaken his head. “You’re exhausted,” he had said. “I bet you’ve been helping people out all day, haven’t you?” He wasn’t wrong. “Go rest. We can discuss it in the morning.”

Jopson had suddenly found himself purposeless and with nothing to do. The metaphor of feeling marooned at sea had never been more apt.

“I’m sure Crozier will think of something,” Jopson told his brother.

Jack snorted. “You have a lot of faith in him. Are you sure you aren’t still crushing on that guy?”

Jopson felt his cheeks turn pink. Once upon a time, Thomas had been ridiculously in love with Francis. How could he not be? Crozier was intelligent, principled, hard-working, and devastatingly handsome. Even now that he was fully over his schoolgirl crush, there were still days where he wanted to don a leopard loincloth and climb him like a tree.

“It’s not like that,” he protested, regardless. “It’s not the first time he’s had a problem like this one. Did I tell you about that time we were trapped in a base in the Arctic? If it hadn’t been for Doctor Silna and him, we wouldn’t have made it out alive.”

“Let’s hope that translates to knowing how to rescue you all from the Caribbean,” Jack sighed.

“I’ll be fine.” Desperate to change the topic to anything but himself, he asked, “How is work? Did they tell you if they’re going to let you work from home?”

“Yeah, right,” Jack said. “My manager is all for Boris Johnson’s bloody herd immunity plan. Says that if we get sick we should go to work anyway so everyone at the office can get infected and get it over with.”

“Did you record him saying that?” Jopson switched to the hand-free mode to google the e-mail address of a good union lawyer. “If you can prove it, you can threaten to sue them.”

He doubted the suit itself would go anywhere, but sometimes threatening legal action was enough.

“Don’t worry, Tom,” Jack said flippantly. “It won’t get as bad as in Italy. Plus, I’m young and healthy. If I catch it, it’ll be just like getting the flu. It’s not like I’m high risk.”

Both of them went silent.

Thomas knew they were both thinking about their late mother.

“Still,” he said, “be careful.”

“I’ll be fine.” There was a voice on the other end of the line. “Crap. I have to go, my break is over. Talk to you tomorrow.” Jack chuckled. “Try not to fall head first onto your advisor’s prick.”

“Piss off.” Thomas laughed. “Goodbye.”

He hung up.

The sun was gone. The ship and the moon over his head were the only sources of light left.

His eyes traced the invisible lines connecting the stars into constellations. He still knew most of them: astronomy was how he’d first gotten interested in physics as a child. He thought of the sailors of old, and how they had used the stars to find their way home. The North Star stared back at him, as indifferent to his plight as it was powerless to solve it.

“There you are,” said Blanky’s gruff voice behind him.

Jopson turned around. Doctor Silna and Goodsir were with him. He greeted them all with the sign for ‘Good evening.’

Doctor Blanky signed as he spoke out loud, “I reckoned you’d be by yourself, worrying yourself stupid.”

‘Do you smoke?’ Doctor Silna said.

‘Back in school,’ Jopson replied. He didn’t remember the sign of ‘secondary school’, so to clarify he added, ‘I was 16. I quit.’

Doctor Silna laughed.

“She doesn’t mean tobacco, lad,” Blanky said.

“Oh. I see. No, I haven’t.” Jopson shook his head. He hadn’t had much of an opportunity to party back as an undergrad, not while he had to take care of his family.

“No time like now to change that, then!” Blanky signed something to Silna, who grinned and signed back something that Jopson didn’t understand.

“Are you okay with this?” Jopson asked Goodsir. The man was so reserved, he couldn’t imagine him smoking a joint.

“It’ll be an interesting experiment,” Goodsir replied, his inquisitive eyes full of curiosity.

Well. Jopson couldn’t argue with that.

They were scientists, after all.

*

“It’s getting a bit late, isn’t it?” Little said.

Irving and Hodgson had invaded the cabin he shared with Des Voeux two hours ago, after the second assembly of the day. Hodgson had laid down on Little’s bed while Irving sat on the only chair in the cabin, leaving Edward with two options: sitting with Des Voeux on the boy’s bed or remaining upright.

His legs were starting to get tired.

Little had been trying to get them to leave, but his labmates either didn’t understand his pointed comments, or they did, but didn’t care. Edward was so exhausted after everything that had happened that day that all he wanted to do was curl up into a blanket burrito and pretend that he had turned into a lichen, but he wasn’t about to do that with three other people in the room. He could envision his patience being stretched like taffy by a sadistic candy maker.

“How long do you think it’ll take our sponsor to sort themselves out?” Hodgson asked.

“They’ll just pretend we don’t exist,” Des Voeux said. As usual, he was reading something on his phone and only about ten per cent of his attention was on their conversation. “Bury us.”

“Maybe. You know,” Hodgson said, “according to the legend, when the plague hit Edinburgh they immured some of the residents of Mary King's Close to stop its spread.”

“Good Lord, Hodgson,” Irving rubbed at his eyes.

“Cool,” Des Veoux said, although his bored tone of voice made it hard to tell if he was mocking him or being genuine.

“It is, isn’t it?” Hodgson beamed at him. “It was believed to be one of the most haunted places in Edinburgh! Although, of course, it was later revealed that the biogas being released by a nearby marsh was simply making people hallucinate all those apparitions.”

“Well, of course. Ghosts don’t exist.” Irving crossed his arms.

“Oh, look at that,” Little checked his wristwatch. “Nearly half-past eleven. Maybe we should start thinking of going to bed.”

“Why the fuck do you have a wristwatch when you can check the hour on your phone?” Des Voeux murmured something that sounded suspiciously like ‘Idiot.’

“If you think university bureaucracy is bad, wait to see how long it will take our sponsors to pay attention to us,” Irving said. “We will be here for months.”

“We’ll be modern-day Sergei Krikalevs!” Hodgson said, far more cheerfully than the situation warranted.

The others stayed silent, unwilling to give him an excuse to explain what he meant by that.

“Sergei Krikalev,” Hodgson persevered, “the last Soviet citizen.”

Little looked at his nails. Irving poked at the duvet.

Des Voeux was the weakest link. “What, from Russia?”

“Yes, obviously,” Hodgson replied. “He was one of the astronauts aboard the Mir space station when the Soviet Union collapsed. After that the country was in such a state of disarray that for a while they were in no condition to send a ship to retrieve him. He was trapped in that space station for months, with no hope of being rescued.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Irving. Curious despite himself, he asked, “how long was he up there for?”

“Nearly a year, if I recall correctly.2” Hodgson smiled, happy to have their attention.

“A year,” Irving breathed. “Think of all we’d miss if we spent an entire year here.”

“The opera season,” Hodgson said mournfully.

“My niece’s birth,” Irving added.

“Edinburg’s Fringe Festival!” Hodgson sat up.

Irving ignored him. “The Feast of Corpus Christi.”

“Aren’t you guys tired?” Little said. “I think I might change into my pyjamas.”

Des Voeux kicked at the wall, listless. “I’d miss the release of Cyberpunk 2077.”

“Can’t you play it through that platform--What is it called?” Hodgson snapped his fingers as he tried to remember it. “Stream?”

“Steam,” Des Voeux corrected him, the dead expression in his eyes letting him know in no uncertain terms what he thought about Hodgson’s mother. “Yeah, but I had pre-ordered the collector’s edition. It comes with a statue of V riding a nuclear bomb.”

“I don’t know what that’s slang for,” Irving loudly proclaimed, blushing red, “but I remind you once again that I don’t want to hear about the homosexual lifestyle.”

Des Voeux and Little looked at each other, united for once in their bafflement at Irving’s Irvingness.

“Jopson plays video games,” Little said, attempting to comfort his intern. “I could ask him if he’ll play with you.”

Des Voeux looked at him as if he was stupid.

Well. There went that day’s attempt at bonding with him.

“What about you, Little?” Hodgson asked him. “What would you miss if we got stuck here?”

Little opened his mouth and then closed it once again. He shrugged.

He hadn’t had much to look forward to this year. He’d had plans, of course: teaching classes after summer; a couple of papers that were being reviewed, and that now would have their publishing dates delayed; that book he kept meaning to write but couldn’t find the inspiration for. Visiting his parents this Christmas. But he hadn’t been particularly looking forward to any of those things. They were things that he had to do, and that he would do to the best of his ability, but that he’d get no enjoyment from.

It wasn’t depression3\--it was too mundane, too unremarkable for that. Eventually, Little had learnt to take for granted that nothing would break through the dull haze of apathy that seemed to permeate his days.

The others were still looking at him, waiting for an answer.

His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Little managed to say, “I had that conference in October.”

“Oh, yes,” Hodgson said. “It’ll have to be cancelled, of course.”

“Maybe they’ll do it online,” Des Voeux suggested.

“They should,” Irving said. “It’s a conference about climate change. It doesn’t make much sense to have people from all over the world _fly_ to it.”

“True. Well,” Hodgson slapped his knees and stood up. “We should probably get going. I know Little must be keen to go to bed.”

Edward shrugged, no longer so eager to be alone with his thoughts. “It’s okay. I don't think I could sleep right now.”

Hodgson seemed surprised. “Are you sure?”

Little sat next to Des Voeux. “Yes.”

“I’m not too tired either,” his student said.

“We can stay a little longer,” Irving agreed.

“Alright then.” Hodgson sat back down. “Does anyone have a deck of cards? I could teach you how to play the _Jeu de la Bête_!”

“I think I have one back in our room.” Irving got off the bed.

“Is it the sort of game you can place bets on?” Des Voeux finally put down his phone.

They spent most of the night sitting on the floor, playing round after round of Hodgson’s weird French card games.

*

Harry Peglar knocked on the door before he could psych himself out. This might be a terrible mistake. It was possible that, by doing this, he was going to tear open a wound that had only recently begun to heal.

But he needed to give it a try.

Now, more than ever, was the time to risk everything.

The door opened at last. Harry grinned, his heart soaring at the mere thought of seeing--

\--Morfin’s ghastly face.

“Yes?” the man said. For a seasoned sailor in a currently unmoving ship, he was looking rather seasick.

“Uh, I wanted to talk with John, if he’s available,” Harry said.

“Yeah.” Morfin nodded and stayed in front of the door.

Harry waited.

“...I meant the other John,” he said eventually. “Bridgens, your cabin mate.”

“Oh, right. He’s in the shower, but come in.” John Morfin waved him in, finally stepping aside. “You have to be more specific. Awful lot of Johns in this ship.”

“Yes, there are,” Harry agreed, closing the door of the cabin behind himself.

Morfin sat on the one chair in the cabin and put his headphones on. The music that came out of them sounded suspiciously like Taylor Swift.

After some hesitation, Harry sat down on Bridgens’ bed. And he had no doubt it was Bridgen’s bed, rather than Morfin’s. Apart from being neatly made, there was a book by the pillow. Harry took it and inspected the cover. It was John’s old copy of Love in the Time of Cholera. Harry smiled. Gabriel García Márquez was an old favourite of John’s.

From the adjacent bathroom came the muffled sound of a shower being shut off. A few minutes later Bridgens came out of it, barefoot and clad in flannel pyjamas, a towel draped over his neck and his long, wet hair combed back.

He looked cosy. He looked adorable. He looked like a nerd.

He looked like everything Harry had ever wanted.

John had been towelling his hair dry, but he stopped as he saw him. “Harry.” He reflexively checked the buttons of his pyjama top, as if to make sure they were all neatly done.

“Sorry to show up without warning,” Harry said, standing up. “I needed to see you.”

The affection in Bridgen’s eyes warmed him to his very core. “I’m always happy to see you, Harry. I…” He stopped, looking at Morfin, who was sitting on a chair facing them, eyes closed as he bounced his head in time with whatever song he was listening to. John held a finger up. “Just a second.”

“Of course.” Harry stuck his hands in his pockets.

John touched Morfin’s shoulder. Morfin opened his eyes and took off his headphones.

“Hi, Morfin,” John smiled. “I know it’s late, but Harry and I were about to have a private conversation. Would you mind…?” he trailed off awkwardly.

“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll turn up the volume.” He made to put his headphones back on, already humming the song to himself.

“Actually, Morfin,” John cringed. “I really hate to ask. But could you possibly… leave the room? For a couple of--” John looked back at Harry, something searching in his eyes, and it occurred to Harry that he wasn’t the only one who was taking a chance with this conversation. “Hours?” he proposed, still looking at Peglar, something hopeful in his face.

Peglar nodded vigorously. The answering smile in John’s face was beautiful.

Morfin looked from John to Harry. Peglar gave him a smile that was more of a grimace. You could see the gears working in Morfin’s head. Harry knew the exact moment he got it.

“Oh. Oh! You sly dog, why didn’t you say so?” Morfin pushed himself to his feet. “Yes, I’ll go get something to eat. You two do your thing.” He winked an eye at him.

Harry flushed, his cheeks turning redder as Morfin busied himself grabbing a phone charger and a jacket. Harry and John stood in silence while Morfin put his shoes on and laboriously tied his shoelaces. Peglar was ready to offer to do it for him when the man finally (finally!) stood up and left the cabin with one last cheerful, “Have fun!”

Harry and John’s eyes found each other once again.

God, Harry wanted to kiss him.

“You said you needed to see me?” Bridgens moved closer.

“Yes,” Harry said. He took a deep breath, the words at the tip of his tongue, and then, “I… what did you think of the captain’s speech?”

Harry could have kicked himself.

John blinked, surprised, as if he had also expected him to say something different. “It was quite worrying, but Hartnell is a capable man. I’m certain he’ll find a solution.”

“We’re lucky this is happening with him at the helm,” Harry said.

John nodded. “Yes. Would you like to sit?”

He gestured at his bed. They both sat at the edge of it.

Harry opened his mouth but nothing came out. He had rehearsed the words in his mind, but they now deserted him. John stood where he was, watching him with the same loving patience he had offered him when he had taught him how to manage his dyslexia. It settled something in Harry’s chest.

At last, his voice trembling, he managed to say: “I’m scared. I don’t know what’s going to happen to us.”

“Harry,” John started, already reaching to hold him.

“Let me finish,” Harry pleaded. “Please.” John went silent. His arm dropped like a felled tree. “This whole situation… it made me rethink things. I know we said that it would be best to end things when we did. I know that long-distance relationships are hard. But I don’t care. Because when Captain Hartnell told us that we could be trapped in this ship for months, all I could think of was how great it was that I’d get to spend more time with you.” A shaky smile appeared on his lips. “I don’t know if you still feel the same way about me--”

“Harry,” John repeated.

This time it was Harry’s turn to go silent.

John raised his hand. Harry knew it well: he had felt its warmth on his skin a thousand times. On his arm, on his thigh, stroking him to hardness, holding Harry’s in his own. He knew the strength of it, the calluses on his palm from a lifetime of hard work. But most of all he remembered how gentle its touch was, how safe he felt under it. His eyes fell closed, and as John cupped his cheek, Harry allowed himself to experience that tenderness fully, to savour every nuance of it like fine wine.

“Harry,” John whispered. “I don’t think I know how to stop loving you.”

Harry opened his eyes. John’s warm gaze found him.

The two men leaned closer and found each other in the middle.

Every sailor knew to maintain a store of memories to keep them afloat when things got difficult. As John’s lips touched his and everything went still, Harry knew this would be one of his.

*

Goodsir examined the weed bowl. He had expected it to look like the wooden pipe Blanky smoked tobacco in. That pipe was an old-fashioned thing made out of dark wood. Goodsir had always privately thought that it made Blanky look like a pirate. This particular pipe, on the other hand, was made of coloured glass.

The other three occupants of the cabin had already smoked from it. It had affected them in very different ways. Jopson had gone boneless, and was now laying on the same bed atop which Blanky and Goodsir were sitting. Every once in a while Jopson would poke his own cheek and giggle, but other than that, Crozier’s grad student seemed unwilling to move. Silna, on the other hand, had become more energetic than usual. She was dancing by the bed, her braids undone and her messy hair falling on her face. Meanwhile, Blanky seemed completely unaffected by it.

It was interesting how three people could partake in the same substance and yet be affected by it in such different ways. Goodsir wondered how it would affect him.

“How did you get it through customs?” Goodsir asked.

“It’s for medical use.” Blanky tapped his prosthetic leg with his knuckles. “Got a note from my doctor and everything.” His expression turned serious. “You know you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to, lad,” Blanky said. “No one is going to think less of you for it.”

“No, no,” Goodsir frowned. “I want to try it. I never got the chance back in university.”

“People never offered you a joint, did they?” Blanky asked.

“No. It’s a shame. I would have said yes. I mean, how could I not?” He hazarded a smile. “To experience first hand the effects of THC… what kind of academic would I be if I didn’t take the chance.”

Blanky shrugged. “One who doesn’t feel like smoking. I mean it, Harry. You don’t have to do it.”

“I know.” Goodsir nodded to himself. “But I want to. How do I do it?”

“If you’re sure.” Blanky fished a lighter from his back pocket. “Just hold it to your lips and I’ll light it for you. Ready?”

Goodsir inhaled as Blanky held the lighter. The smoke burnt his throat and his eyes watered, but he managed to keep from coughing.

“Hold it,” Blanky instructed, and Goodsir held his breath. “There you g--”

Like a puppet whose strings had been cut, Goodsir’s muscles went limp. He found himself lying face-up on the bed, an odd lassitude overtaking him.

Oh. So that was what had happened to Jopson.

He raised his arms. Or rather, he thought of raising his arms. It took his muscles a few seconds to respond, as if the mechanism involved in transmitting his brain’s decision to the rest of his body was delayed. He opened and closed his fists, and there was a lag between the decision and the movement. Or was the lag between his eyes and his visual cortex? There had to be a way to devise a way to test this hypothesis.

His molars felt cold.

His eyeballs felt cold.

Was he blinking enough?

As slowly as Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the mountain, he turned his head. It lolled to the side.

Silna was dancing still. Her expressive hands drew in the air words he could not understand. He tried to follow the motion of her fingers but the image blurred into its afterimage.

Silna twirled around. She was humming--no, she was singing a low, guttural note, sustained in time and folding on itself. She climbed on the bed, the mattress bouncing under her weight.

‘Singing--you?’ he managed to sign.

She took her hand and guided it to her throat. He could feel it vibrate it against her palm.

‘Feel that?’ she asked.

Goodsir nodded.

‘Now you,’ she said, and put her hands on his throat.

“What?” Goodsir blinked up at her.

She rolled her eyes. ‘Sing!’ she said, and covered his neck with her hand.

Goodsir hummed something, a wordless song whose melody eluded him. Her grin widened and she laughed. She dropped her head onto his chest. From this angle, he could just about see her sign, but he couldn’t understand it.

“What?” he said.

Blanky chuckled. “She’s saying that you’re purring like a kitten, lad.”

For some reason, this was the funniest thing he had ever heard. He felt giggles build deep in his belly and climb up his body, until they were bubbling out of him. He turned his head and saw Jopson laughing, too, laying on his side and watching them.

Silna’s weight felt right on top of him. Goodsir was warm and safe. There was nothing to do, no place to be but here.

He held Silna close and laughed.

*

Gibson collapsed on his front, his arms giving out under him. He panted, face hidden against the pillow. Hickey -- might as well call himself that, too, in the privacy of his own head -- rolled off him. The sheet clung to his sweaty skin. He reached for his jeans and found the vape pen he had stolen from that officer and turned it on. Hickey pillowed his head on his arm. Feeling pleasantly tired and very satisfied with himself, he exhaled a cloud of watermelon-scented smoke. Gibson turned around, that angular face of his still flushed, and reached for his phone on the bedside table.

“You know we’re not supposed to do that in the cabin,” Gibson said as he scrolled through Reddit. “My roommate will be furious if he finds out you were vaping in our cabin.”

“It doesn’t sound like you care about your roommate’s emotional state,” Hickey pointed out.

“I don’t,” Gibson agreed with a shrug.

“Smart man.”

Billy snorted. “We’re going to be at sea for a while. What will you do when you run out of vape juice?”

Steal some from that Blanky guy. He was willing to bet that the man had that fancy vape juice laced with THC, but Hickey hadn’t managed to break into his room yet. “I’ll manage.”

“This is going to blow.” Gibson tapped at his phone. “Hah.”

“What?” Turning onto his side, Hickey rested his cheek on his hand.

Gibson showed him the phone screen. “Check it out.” It was a picture of two women fighting over a toilet paper roll in a Walmart. “People are going crazy hoarding toilet paper in the mainland.”

“Huh.” Hickey took another pull from the vape. “Interesting.”

Very interesting.

Billy went back to scrolling, his long finger flicking over the screen. “Oh, come on, it’s the fourth time I’ve seen this meme. Downvoted.”

Hickey watched Gibson consideringly. He prided himself in knowing how to identify the strengths and weaknesses of those around him. He had only today met Gibson, but he got the feeling that he had a good sense of him already.

“Mmh.” He made his wager. “Hey, Gibson?”

Billy arched an eyebrow at him. “What?”

Hickey smiled. He knew it was not a nice smile. “Who has the key to the storage closet?”

*

It was past midnight when Crozier made it back to his cabin. Fitzjames, Hartnell and Crozier had spent hours considering their options and trying to get in touch with anyone who could help them get home. He had a dull headache, as if someone had been inflating his brain through a straw and it was now a couple of sizes too big for his skull. He closed the door behind himself and sat down on the bed heavily. He slowly fell backwards, until he was lying sideways on the mattress, his legs and arms hanging out.

What a shit day.

There was no sign of Jopson in the cabin, but he wasn’t worried. Blanky had messaged him earlier to tell him that he was going to look after him. God bless him.

Unwilling to sit up even for a second, he squirmed out of his clothes. He could picture what he must look like: a tubby old man, wiggling like a worm on a hook. Very handsome. Fitzjames never undressed like this, he bet. The man probably had one of those fancy wooden clothes valets, and he took off each piece of clothing before carefully folding them over it. He probably never had to look under his bed to find his underwear, and he never lost a sock.

And when he did get naked, he would look a great deal better than Francis himself did, too, Crozier bet.

Crozier pushed his clothes off the bed and rolled onto his belly to crawl under the sheets.

He couldn’t even get properly mad at Fitzjames today. The man had acted like-- well, like a reliable person. Like someone dependable. He had been willing to take responsibility for something that, if Crozier was fair, had been mostly Franklin’s fault. It had been unexpected. Crozier hadn’t taken him for that sort of man.

He was once again reminded of those early blog posts he had read, before James had gotten famous. He had seemed like a principled man back then. It was only later, once he had become an influencer, that everything he posted had become inane.

He grabbed his phone and opened the Twitter app. He knew what he’d find in Fitzjames’ account: empty feel-good anecdotes, corporate greenwashing, gratuitous pictures of him doing yoga half-naked. But when he opened the man’s account he found something he hadn’t expected there.

> **Dr Fitzjames 🏳️🌈💚 (he/him) @therealfjm · Mar 12**
> 
> Great thread! 🧵👇🏼
> 
> **Francis Crozier, PhD @frmcrozier · Mar 12**
> 
> We need to talk about how the way professors rely on their teams to do their grunt work for them negatively impacts their subordinate’s chances of getting tenure. (1/?)

Fitzjames had retweeted his thread.

Huh.

His phone slipped off his fingers and fell on his face.

FOOTNOTES:  
1 Thanks to tulliolaciceronis for bringing [this video](https://twitter.com/amctv_es/status/993866613958029312) to my attention.  [ ▲ ]

2It was nearly 312 days. The thing is, he could have returned home. There was a re-entry capsule in the Mir. But since he was the only flight engineer left in the space station, leaving would have meant the end of the Mir station. And so Sergei chose to stay even after all other crew members had left.

Those months were hard. The low gravity wrecked his body. Every so often he’d get news from Earth. Inflation was so great that his wife no longer could feed herself with his astronaut salary. It was a time of political unrest and uncertainty.

Eventually, he did manage to go home, and vowed to never return to space.

Just kidding! He returned to space on several occasions!

What a guy.  [ ▲ ]

3 It was. [ ▲ ]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s an (abandoned?) fan account on twitter that goes by @frmcrozier. It’s not affiliated with this story/the author. There’s also some random dude whose handle is @therealfjm who is not, in fact, the real Fitzjames.


	5. What Day Is It Today, Again?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Francis and James gaze at each other in the candlelight, Irving is totally straight, and Jopson and Little finally talk about the elephant in the room.

James struck the match and lit the candle. Its trembling flame illuminated the gloom of the cabin. Not for the first time, James was grateful that when he packed for the trip he had put an entire box of scented candles in his suitcase. James had done it on a whim, despite knowing that he likely wouldn’t get to enjoy them during the expedition. However, James was a firm believer in self-care. As he prepared his luggage, he had promised himself that he’d find the time to unwind.

That had been back in February, which might as well be a lifetime ago. So much had happened since then. For example, he could never have imagined that he would one day consider Crozier an ally. And never would have dreamed that he’d one day look forward to seeing Francis’ face illuminated by dancing candlelight.

“Is that better?” James asked.

“Yes, thank you,” Francis admitted, looking back down at his unplugged laptop.

Of course, Fitzjames could also never have imagined that the ship would at one point need to ration their electricity.

Thankfully that would soon come to an end. After endless rounds of negotiation, the captain had secured the help of a nearby island. They were going to send a tender with fuel and some essential supplies. It wouldn’t be enough to sail back to England, but at least they would no longer have to work by candlelight. 

Even if Francis did look rather fetching like this, James thought.

But he had no time to waste on appreciating his very straight colleague’s beauty. They had a job to do. The last couple of days Francis and he had been taking turns trying to contact every person, company and institution who might have the slightest chance of helping them return home. To James’ surprise, they made a good team. Francis’ attitude had improved, too. Gone was Oscar the grouch, replaced by an intelligent man with a biting humour sense.

James dragged his chair closer to the desk. “Did you manage to contact the dean?”

Francis shook his head. “Couldn’t get her to pick up the phone. Seems like every last person in Cambridge has spent all week in meetings discussing whether they should cancel classes or not.”

James sighed. “You’d think they would have decided by now.”

“They’re academics,” Crozier reminded him dryly. “Before they agree on a strategy, they must first consider every possible alternative to acting.” 

A couple of weeks ago this would have seemed to James unnecessarily mean-spirited. After all, Cambridge’s administration had to be certain that they were making the right choice. Things weren’t so black and white, he would have told him. Even if part of James would have agreed with him, the diplomat in him would still have demanded Crozier try to empathize with the dean. 

Now, however, he could recognize Francis’ comment for the quip it was, and find the humour in it.

They understood each other better now. And it went both ways: yesterday James had told Dundy an anecdote about the time he met Greta Thunberg. He had been so engrossed in his own story that he had forgotten for a minute that Crozier was also in the room. James had braced himself for one of the man’s not-so-subtle digs at him. 

Instead, Francis had stayed silent for a couple of seconds before finally saying, “I saw that interview she and Rose Whipple1 gave. They’re two remarkable young women, aren’t they?”

James had smiled and nodded in reply. “The kids are alright.”

It had surprised a little amused snort out of Francis, and that had been worth all of Dundy’s teasing.

So what if James enjoyed Francis’ attention a little bit too much? James was a self-aware man. He knew he craved validation. There was something about getting it from a former sceptic that felt good enough to quieten his imposter syndrome for a couple of hours.

Someone knocked on the door. It was the sort of tidy little knock that could come from either a kindly old lady or Thomas Jopson.

“Come in,” James said.

Sure enough, Jopson walked into the room, his phone’s flashlight held up to illuminate his way. As he walked into James’ office he turned it off with a shake of his wrist.

“Good morning, doctors.” Noticing the candles, he added, “That’s some excellent ambience, doctor Fitzjames.”

James blushed. Feeling the need to explain his choice, he said, “The light from the hatch window wasn’t quite enough.”

“I see.” Was it the way the candlelight illuminated Jopson’s face, or was that a fondly mocking smile on the man’s face? James could never tell with him. “I wanted to let you know that I finished that list you needed.”

“Ah, great job, Jopson,” Francis said.

“Thank you, doctor.” Jopson lowered his head in a gesture that almost counted as a bow. “I sent you both an invitation to edit the document.”

Fitzjames opened his inbox and clicked on it. Luckily, they hadn’t had to disconnect the internet yet. Jopson had made a Google Spreadsheet with multiple tabs to keep track of what everyone had requested.

“They didn’t hold back, did they?” James said as he navigated the spreadsheet. “Someone asked for the collected works of Dickens.”

“Doctor Stanley isn’t fond of e-readers,” Jopson explained.

“They also asked for Mascarpone cheese,” James said.

“ _Real_ Mascarpone cheese,” Jopson corrected him. “Doctor Hodgson was very insistent about that. He wants to make tiramisu.”

“Hot-pressed watercolour paper?” James read out loud.

“Doctor Irving only packed cold-pressed paper.”

Francis put his glasses on and looked at his own screen. “Jopson, that’s an awful lot of condoms.”

Jopson's face was as neutral as the colour palette of an interior designer. “Many people seemed to believe they would need them.”

“Feeling optimistic, were they,” Francis deadpanned.

James kept scrolling. “You split the list up by condom size,” he pointed out.

Jopson gave him the sort of smile that won poker championships. “Most people claimed they needed the XL ones, so I had to make some educated guesses.”

“How did you--” Fitzjames started to ask, but caught himself in time. “You know what? Nevermind. We can have that conversation some other time.”

“They asked for lube, too,” Crozier said. “Good Lord. Do we really need so many bottles of it?”

Fitzjames clicked on that tab. His eyes widened. It was, indeed, a lot of lube. Even James, who had participated in a few tasteful (and not so tasteful) sex parties, found it a bit unrealistic.

“I thought it’d be better to give each person a bottle, rather than to have to distribute them on a per-case basis,” Jopson said. “I drew the line at asking for specific brands.” 

James shook his head. “I’m sorry, Jopson. We can’t send this list to the coast guard officers. They were very clear that they would only bring us essential supplies. They’ll laugh us off.”

“They’re laughing at us already.” Crozier pointed out. “We might as well send it. Even if they only get us ten per cent of what we asked for, people will relish having some comforts from back home.”

“There must be easier ways to keep everyone’s morale up.” James mentally toyed with the idea of organizing a sort of party--a fancy dress party, perhaps? Or maybe he could start a hot yoga class. He filed those ideas for later.

Jopson crossed his arms behind his back, his posture as straight as a soldier’s. “Would you like me to re-do the list?”

“No, that’s fine. Very thorough, as always,” Crozier said, not without humour. “Thank you, Jopson.”

“My pleasure.”

There was a knock on the door. Fitzjames invited them in. Captain Hartnell walked in, Solomon Tozer in tow, both carrying flashlights.

“Good morning, doctors,” Hartnell said.

“Good morning, captain. Officer Tozer,” James greeted them. 

“Morning. Nice candle.” Tozer sniffed. “Is that sandalwood?”

James refused to blush. “And sage, yes.” Eager to change the topic, he said, “Jopson was just telling us that he finished writing that list of supplies we need.”

“I sent it to you, too, captain,” Jopson told him.

“I saw it. That’s why I came. I was surprised by how many toilet rolls the list said we needed,” Hartnell said.

James clicked on that tab. If the number of boxes of condoms and tubes of lube in the list had been optimistic, the number of toilet rolls was concerning. “Is that number right?”

“It is,” Jopson confirmed.

“Jesus Christ,” Francis murmured. “Did a dysentery epidemic strike while I wasn’t looking?”

“I asked every person aboard and checked all the public stalls in the ship myself,” Jopson explained. “They had all run out of toilet paper.”

“Don’t get me wrong, Mister Jopson, I have no doubt you were very meticulous, but that number worries me. We should have at least one month’s worth of toilet paper left,” Captain Hartnell said. 

Jopson cleared his throat. “If I may, captain,” he said delicately. “It’s possible some people aboard may be hoarding the toilet paper.”

“What do you think, Officer Tozer?” Hartnell asked.

“Well, sir,” Tozer scratched his beard, “there’s been a lot of memes about TP in the group chat.”

“Look into it. We can’t have people hoarding supplies like that. It’s the last thing we need right now.” Hartnell turned toward James and Crozier. He hesitated. “I know it’s unlikely that the expedition members, being academics, would not--”

“We’ll look into it too,” Crozier said, saving the man from having to finish his sentence. “If the PhD process prepares you for something, it’s to hoard free stuff.”

James, who had survived off free department-meeting-biscuits and hope during his first years as a grad student, could only agree 2.

*

Irving saw a Little silhouette of a man.

Edward was leaning on the railing, the gentle breeze running through his hair. His shirt clung to the lines of his broad shoulders. He had rolled up his sleeves to reveal two strong forearms lightly dusted with hair. His strong profile and dark beard contrasted with the backdrop of the azure Caribbean sky. The form-fitting jeans he wore had been cuffed to show off his calves. 

Regrettably, he was also wearing flip flops.

“Can I move now?” Little said.

“No.”

Irving should have convinced him to change his shoes, but it was too late now for that. John adjusted his grip on the paintbrush. It moved over the paper with broad strokes, shading the man’s broad back and wide shoulders. Edward’s shirt was white, but Irving was using a very diluted shade of Arctic blue that better reflected the afternoon lighting.

“John, please.” Little shifted. “When you asked me to pose for you, you didn’t say it would take so long.”

“Stop moving,” Irving insisted. “Go back to how you were standing before.”

Little sighed and obeyed.

It was difficult to get the denim texture right using watercolours, but he was sure that if he used the paper’s tooth to his advantage…

“Good afternoon, Doctor Little.”

Irving raised his eyes. Thomas Jopson was standing next to Edward. Irving didn’t mind Jopson. He was a God-fearing young man, polite and proper even when he disagreed with others. Plus, he was standing to the other side of Little, so he wasn’t blocking Irving’s view of him. With any luck Jopson would distract Edward enough to get him to stop squirming like a toddler. He could stay.

“Good afternoon, Jopson,” Little greeted him. He pointed a thumb at Irving. “I’m posing for John.”

“Not moving!” Irving reminded him.

Little sighed and lowered his hands once again.

“I see,” Jopson said.

“He has me trapped here,” Little complained.

“Is that so bad?” Jopson asked, very judiciously in Irving’s opinion.

John watched Edward’s throat bob as he swallowed, but since he had been painting the man’s legs he didn’t chide him for it.

“No,” Little said. “I suppose not.” He paused. “The view is quite nice?” There was a dubious edge to his voice. 

Trust Edward to doubt the majesty of a view like this one. God’s gifts were wasted on him.

“It is,” Jopson agreed. “I can see why Irving chose to paint it.”

Jopson had good taste, Irving noted.

Little laughed nervously. “Oh, don’t let him hear you say that.” He lowered his voice, but not enough for Irving’s notoriously sharp hearing. “He only ever brings the watercolours out when he’s having a gay freak out.”

Irving’s brush stopped in the air. It dripped a blob of admiral blue on the piece of paper. 

“Oh, darn,” he hissed, and fished a paper handkerchief from his pocket to mop at it, but his attention was on their conversation.

“Does he?” Jopson said, his tone neutral. John blushed even as he furiously dabbed at the paper. “Who’s the lucky guy?”

“Doctor Hickey. You know, the redhead with the goatee?” Little explained. “John is obsessed with him.”

“Really?” Jopson glanced back at Irving, his gaze considering. John was quick to look back at his drawing pad. “Didn’t take him for the type.”

John sighed with relief. Yes, of course that Jopson could tell that Edward was wrong about him. Irving knew there was a reason he liked him.

“Did you think he was straight?” Edward said, sounding dubious. Irving felt his ears turn red.

“No,” Jopson said, “but I thought he’d be more into bears.”

Irving stood up. His sketch pad fell on the deck. In his haste to get away, he nearly knocked over the mug of water he had been using to clean his brushes.

The audacity of them! Who gave them the right to talk about him like that? 

Not that there was anything wrong with homosexuality--he was friends with Little, after all, and he shared a lab with him. It was true that he had begged Des Voeux to switch cabins with him. But if Des Voeux and Hodgson had both refused to room with Little, Irving would have been willing to do it. He was not homophobic. He was just glad that it hadn’t come to that. 

Not because he thought Little was some sort of rapist or anything like that, mind you. It was only that Irving would have had to sleep next to him, and some mornings, John’s body betrayed him. It was perfectly natural. A simple bodily function that had nothing to do with the strange dreams he sometimes had. Irving was simply a hot-blooded man. These things happened. But what if Edward had noticed it? He could have taken it the wrong way. Assumed that Irving was interested in him. It would have been so awkward for both of them, especially if the interest happened to be mutual, and Little held Irving in his arms, lifted his chin, and--

He pushed the door open and ran down the stairs, his eyes adjusting to the gloom inside the ship. The emergency lights gave everything a rusty red tint.

Little and Jopson had no right to talk about him like that, he thought. They had no right at all to speculate about his sexuality. Because he was heterosexual. He loved women. He loved breasts. He was a competent lover. He--

\--bumped into someone and fell on his ass.

John groaned.

“Oh, shit,” a familiar voice said.

Irving froze. As he sat up and looked at the man laying on the ground next to him, all his worst fears were confirmed.

God, Irving knew, occasionally put little trials in one’s life. It was His way of testing the strength of one’s faith in Him. The important thing to remember in these situations was that God never asked too much of you.

It followed then that, like Job before him, John Irving was being tested right now.

It was the only possible explanation why, of all the people currently aboard the ship, he had crashed into Doctor Cornelius Hickey himself.

The man was now on his feet and tending a hand at him. “You okay there?”

Irving swallowed and pushed himself to his feet without help. “I’m fine, thank you. I can stand up on my own.”

“Sure.” Hickey shrugged and took his vape pen out of his pocket. His lips closed around the pen.

God was testing him.

Irving shook himself. “I should go.”

“Sure. But before you go,” Cornelius said, interrupting Irving’s escape, “you’re a mathematician, right? I have some graphs I’m thinking of publishing.” The man’s long fingers moved in the air as he gesticulated. “To predict the pandemic’s progression.”

Irving wanted to say no. In fact, what he wanted to do was call him a fraud and a vile seducer, a depraved pervert and a debauchee. However, he didn’t for two reasons.

First of all, Irving was still convinced that Hickey was plagiarizing other academic’s research. He’d love to have an opportunity to prove that. What better way to get the evidence he needed than to check the man’s research himself?

Second, Irving was a sucker for anything math-related.

“You came up with an algorithm to model the evolution of the cases?” he said.

Cornelius’ lips wrapped themselves around the vape pen once again. His cheeks hollowed as he sucked. The wine-red emergency lights made his sharp features and high cheekbones all the more angular. Hickey licked at his bottom lip, as if chasing the taste of something.

_God was testing him._

Hickey exhaled through his nose. The lighting dyed the twin plumes of smoke the colour of blood. The man had never looked so much like the devil. 

The air filled with the scent of Mountain Dew.

“The numbers are mine, yes,” Hickey said at last.

It took John a moment to remember what they’d been talking of. 

Irving cleared his throat. “Alright. Yes, you can email your model to me. I’ll be happy to look it over.”

He gave Hickey the address of his personal email--only because he didn’t want him to have access to his university address, in case he could use it to hack him and steal his work--and then left, face burning.

He was heterosexual.

He was a hundred per cent heterosexual.

*

“I thought he’d be more into bears,” Thomas said.

There was a noise behind them. Edward looked back just in time to see Irving’s retreating back.

“Oh, no.” Thomas’ fluorescent eyes widened. “Do you think he heard us?”

“He might have. Shit,” Little rubbed his face, “I forgot about his notoriously sharp hearing.”

“He seemed upset,” Thomas said, genuinely contrite. “If I had known it was such a sensitive subject for him I wouldn’t have joked about it.”

“He’s gotten better since I met him, but he still has a lot of internalized homophobia to work through. His family is very conservative,” Edward explained. “It can be hard to break through that kind of programming.”

“Mmh.” Thomas’s face was unreadable. “I see.”

“What?”

Jopson hesitated, as if choosing his words carefully. “I wondered if you were in a similar situation and that was why you’ve been avoiding me.”

“I’m not… I’m not avoiding you,” Little murmured. “I’m here, talking with you.”

“That’s true, but I’ve noticed that whenever we get too close to talking about the elephant in the room3, you find an excuse to leave. Which is fine,” Thomas reassured him, perhaps noticing the guilt in Edward’s face. “I just want to make sure we’re on the same page. I don’t want to make you feel pressured if you’re not interested.”

“I’m not…” Edward swallowed. “ _Not_ interested.”

“Is that double negation meant to be a yes?” Thomas’ arched an eyebrow, a hint of amusement in his eyes.

“I am interested,” Edward admitted. “It’s only...” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m not good with relationships. Nor with casual sex. It never works out. I’m too withdrawn for the former, and too intense for the latter. I’ve been told a thousand times.” Edward grimaced at the memory of the last time. It had involved a surprise visit, a pirate hat, and a weekend spent nursing a broken heart. “It’s easier to… abstain.”

“Permanently?” Jopson asked.

One of Edward’s shoulders jerked up in a shrug. “It seems like the decent thing to do. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“What makes you think you’d hurt me?” Thomas said.

Edward knew the answer to that one. His last therapist had assumed that Edward’s behaviour sprung from a series of unfounded beliefs. Edward had learned to always have proof at hand, if only so she would stop dismissing everything he said as ‘irrational’.

“I’m thirty-two. I’ve been in four relationships and I’ve been part of sixteen casual arrangements.” Edward paused. Only when Thomas seemed to accept these numbers without judgement he continued. “Every single time, it ended for the same reasons. At some point you notice a pattern starting to emerge. By now trying to go against that kind of track record would be…” He groped for the right word and settled for, “ _Ascientific_.”

Thomas nodded slowly. “And you put a lot of weight on evidence and certainty.”

“Exactly,” Edward said, relieved that Thomas seemed to get it.

“I see.” Something switched in Jopson, his body language changing. Even his tone of voice was different. It reminded Edward of a dozen different academics on stage, defending their thesis from a particularly vicious audience member. “I’m not denying that evidence. I believe that those relationships and arrangements did indeed end for those reasons. But I don’t think that those results are statistically significant. We’re speaking of a sample of twenty men.”

“People,” Edward corrected.

“Twenty people,” Thomas conceded. “That’s hardly a representative sample. Not to mention, I am willing to speculate that all the members of it shared a common trait.”

Edward found himself leaning closer, genuinely curious. “Which was?”

“They weren’t me.” Thomas’ lips curled into a smile. “That’s quite the extraneous variable, isn’t it?”

Despite himself, Edward found himself laughing at that. “Your thesis committee is not going to stand a chance with you, is it?”

“Damn right,” Thomas said, something vicious in his grin. 

It was rather attractive.

“All joking aside,” Jopson said, turning serious, “I understand what you mean. I’m not exactly the most emotionally available person myself.” That was a bit of an understatement, Edward privately thought. Most of the time it was impossible to get a read of what Jopson was thinking. “But this is not mathematics,” Thomas continued. “Two negatives don’t make a positive. For all we know we might be terrible for each other. And yet…” He covered Edward’s hand on the railing. “I think we could make it work.”

Edward wanted to let Thomas convince him. He wanted to believe that he was a real boy worthy of affection instead of an empty husk of a man.

But despite the wild desire to throw caution to the wind, Edward couldn’t bring himself to answer. He was a figure in an Escher painting, running through those Penrose stairs yet unable to escape the recursive loop of his racing thoughts. Everything that could go wrong might not necessarily go wrong, but that didn’t mean that Edward wasn’t crushed by the fear that _it might_. He pictured a future not far from now, where he’d be trapped in a ship with a now reproachful Thomas. He pictured those easy conversations in the mess hall turning into cutting silence. Losing his one source of joy in an otherwise tedious life. Could he afford to risk so much, when some days it felt like he already had nothing left?

Thomas was watching him still, his expression open and patient. It reminded Edward of his favourite kindergarten teacher. She had used to look at him just like that, silently encouraging his shiest student to speak up.

Edward was shamefully into it.

“I don’t know. It’s a lot to consider.” Edward rubbed his face. Feeling like the worst kind of worm for it, he said, “Can you give me time to think about it?”

“Yes, of course,” Thomas said. “I’m ready to wait.” 

Edward could have wept with relief. “Thank you,” he managed. “I… I appreciate it. I really do.”

Thomas squeezed his hand. They stood side by side, looking at the vast expanse of the ocean surrounding them. A companionable silence settled over them.

\---

FOOTNOTES

1 Rose Whipple is an indigenous activist and organizer. She's best known for speaking up against oil pipelines on indigenous land. Look her up if you can, because she’s doing some incredible work. [ ▲ ]

2 The first rule of the broke grad student is you don’t turn down free food.

The second rule of the broke grad student is you don’t turn down free food. [ ▲ ]

The third is to never plagiarize your jokes.

3 At this point it wasn't so much an elephant as a three ring circus, complete a lion tamer, a magician, and a dozen whimsical Franco-Canadian acrobats. [ ▲ ]


	6. Time is an illusion (Lunchtime doubly so)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> \- Hickey’s nefarious plan is revealed!  
> \- Hodgson has a very bad morning!  
> \- And Fitzjames has a revelation about his relationship with Crozier!

“Where the hell were you?” Gibson asked Hickey as he let him into his cabin.

There was just enough light in the room to see Hickey’s smug face. Peglar had fashioned a makeshift lamp with some light bulbs and a couple of batteries. It seemed like rooming with a technician had some advantages. Even if the man was a stuck up bore who had never looked at Gibson twice. Whatever, let him fuck that grandpa with the book fetish.

“Attending some important business.” Hickey dug into the pocket of his own jeans and took out a chocolate bar. “I got you something.”

Gibson’s eyes widened. They had all run out of chocolate a couple of weeks ago. Even a cheap candy bar like this one was a delicacy now. “Where the hell did you find it?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Hickey shrugged. Billy tried to grab the chocolate bar, but Hickey held it at arm's length, his mischievous eyes dancing with mirth. “What’s the magic word?”

Gibson snorted. “I’m taller than you, so don’t you even try that,” he said as he easily snatched it out of his hand.

Hickey’s smile became tense for a second, but it faded into the amused curiosity with which Cornelius seemed to regard everyone and everything. 

“Suit yourself,” Hickey said. He looked around. “No sign of Peglar?”

Gibson opened the wrapper and took a bite out of the bar. It was delicious, chocolate and candy melting in his tongue, the wafer providing just enough crunch as he chewed it. “Mmmh. No,” he said around his mouthful of food. “He should be in the engine room right now.” 

“Good. Does he suspect anything?” he asked.

Hickey had devised a plan to transfer all the toilet paper from the supply closet to one of the unused cabins in the second deck using Gibson’s cleaning cart. They had to be careful--it was difficult to keep anything a secret in a ship of this size, and toilet paper rolls took up a lot of space.

“Nah,” Gibson said. “He spends all his time with Bridgens lately. I don’t know how Morfin is getting a blink of sleep.”

“Lucky us.” Hickey stepped closer.

Gibson swallowed. He could tell what that look in Hickey’s eyes meant. “Yeah?”

Hickey’s grin widened. “Yes.” He stood on his toes to kiss him.

The thing about Hickey, Gibson thought, panting already as the man pushed him against the wall, was that he demanded nothing short of your whole attention. Gibson was no virgin himself, but there was an intensity to Hickey that made him feel naked even clad in his uniform overalls. With Cornelius, Billy felt like a bug under a magnifying glass, being examined for any flaws that made him unworthy of being pinned to a cork and added to a biologist’s collection.

That shouldn’t do it for Gibson, but it did.

Hickey had Billy’s wrists trapped above his head and a thigh between Gibson’s, that filthy mouth whispering all the horrible, incredible things he wanted to do to him into his ear, when there was a knock on the door.

“Ignore it,” Hickey hissed at him.

“Gibson!” Tozer’s voice came through the door. “Open up!”

“I…” Billy gasped. “I should open the door.”

Hickey’s thigh moved incrementally higher, until Gibson had to stand on his toes or get his balls crushed. 

“No, you shouldn’t,” Hickey said patiently.

“Gibson, I know you’re in there!”

“He doesn’t,” Hickey whispered. “He’s bluffing.”

The door rattled. There was a thump.

“Is he going to kick the door down?” Hickey stepped back, annoyed. It left Gibson with a very visible erection and his sweaty uniform clinging to him. “Go on then. Open up.”

Gibson did so with shaky hands, very aware of what he looked like as he met the officer’s eyes.

“Doctor Hickey needed help with,” he cleared his throat, “a toilet. I was looking for the plunger to--”

“Sure you were.” Tozer pushed him aside and closed the door behind himself. “Cut the crap, Billy. I know exactly what you two were doing in here and I don’t give a shit.”

Hickey was standing in the centre of the room, hands in his pockets, proudly sporting an erection. “Officer Tozer. So nice of you to join us.”

Tozer ignored him. “Gibson, why don’t you tell me what is going on with the toilet paper?”

Oh, crap.

“I told that prim little lapdog already,” Gibson said, trying for apathy as he remembered Jopson’s inquiries. “There’s no need to get more. There’s more than enough of it in the ship to last us a month, it’s only that I haven’t had time to replace it yet.”

“Right,” Tozer said. “So you’re telling me that if I go to the supply closet it will be full of toilet paper rolls.”

Gibson looked at Hickey for an answer. Tozer caught him doing it.

Shit.

“Yes,” Gibson lied. “Yes, of course.”

“So how come I already checked it and it was empty?” Tozer raised his eyebrows.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

“Maybe someone has been hiding it,” Gibson suggested.

“Someone?” Tozer asked.

“Someone else,” Gibson clarified.

“Oh, come on.” Hickey rolled his eyes. “He knows, Billy. Stop digging your own grave.” He took his vape pen out of his pocket.

Gibson panicked. “My own--you--Hickey--” he stammered.

“Look,” Hickey sat down on the bed, legs crossed. “Let’s be candid for a minute, shall we? We all know that whatever other supplies our friends the coast guards bring us, they’re not going to bring us toilet paper. We have all heard about the shortages they’re having in England and America. I doubt a tiny island like that one has their own TP manufacturing industry. For all we know, they might even be worse off than we are.”

Tozer crossed his arms. “Your point being?”

“Whether we ask for more or not, we’re going to run out of it, eventually.” Hickey took a drag from the vape pen. He exhaled a cloud of absinthe-scented steam. “At some point, people are going to get desperate, and when that happens, those rolls are going to have a lot of bargaining power.”

Tozer tried to stare the man down. Billy could have told him that it was a lost cause. It was impossible to embarrass Cornelius. He faced Tozer without an ounce of shame, a wide grin on his lips.

As expected, Tozer was the first one to look away. “You know you’re admitting to a crime right now.”

“Is it truly a crime though?” Hickey frowned thoughtfully. “The toilet paper is still in the ship, and is being distributed by the ship’s custodian, as it ought to be. We’re just being smart about how we ration it. Making sure it goes to whoever needs it most.”

“You mean whoever can pay more for it,” Tozer corrected him.

“Same difference.” Hickey smiled. “The ones most desperate are also the ones willing to pay the most for it.” 

Tozer narrowed his eyes at him. “And why do you think I will let you do that?” 

“Because I’ve been watching you, officer.” Hickey got off the bed. He approached Tozer with that maddening saunter of his. “You’re a smart man, and I can tell you don’t like how things are being run around here. For weeks the captain responded to some old codger with no naval experience who abandoned us at the first sign of trouble. The trip’s sponsor is pretending the expedition doesn’t exist. Even your employer ignores you. In fact, are you certain that they’re planning to send you a paycheck at the end of this month?” 

Gibson swallowed. He’d been fearing the same thing himself, and judging by Tozer’s face, so had he.

“You know,” Hickey’s expressive face twisted into a mask of mock-concern. “A lot of cruise lines are going to go out of business during this pandemic. I wouldn’t be surprised if they fired all of you without even bothering to rescue you first. And then where would you be? Stuck at sea with no food, no fuel, and no way to get home. You’re an officer, Tozer.” Hickey reached up to adjust the collar of Tozer's uniform, his fingers lingering there as he looked at him up and down. Gibson felt a pang of jealousy. “Tell me, when that happens, how long do you think it’ll take the crew to realize that they don’t have to follow your orders anymore?”

Tozer swallowed1. 

“Okay,” Tozer said. “I’m listening.”

Hickey’s grin widened.

*

John Hartnell had fashioned a mask out of an old shirt, while Morfin had tied up a pair of socks around his face.

James and Francis were watching from the upper deck as the two men prepared to board the lifeboat. Most people aboard were on the main deck, surrounding them: a combination of crew members doing their job, workers off duty, and curious academics. Only he and Francis had chosen to watch the scene from up here. With an odd sense of deja vu, James felt like a Commander surveying his troops.

“Didn’t we have some proper masks to give them?” Crozier asked.

“We do have a couple of masks in the infirmary, but the WHO is recommending that only healthcare workers treating patients use them,” James replied.

“Mmh.” Francis considered this. “Sounds to me like they’re trying to keep people from panic -buying them while stocks are low, so hospitals won’t be priced out.”

James… couldn’t quite argue with that.

Should they have given them masks? As the captain said goodbye to the two men and the lifeboat was lowered down, James couldn’t help but think about it.

On the one hand, it was true that they only had a few masks aboard. If someone did get sick the doctors would need them more than anyone. Not to mention that there had been no confirmed cases in that country yet, so the risk of infection was low. And he could see from here that the coast guards were not wearing masks themselves, but a bandana and a handkerchief, so even if Morfin and John had worn a mask, how protected would they have been?

James could recognize the logic of rationing their supplies, of saving them in case they needed them more at some indeterminate point in the future when the virus had spread to this part of the world.

But on the other hand…

“We should have given them those masks,” he murmured.

“Should we have?” Crozier asked. “They’re not reusable. Considering the pandemic is only going to get worse from now on, maybe it’s best to save them for a more high-risk situation. The longer we’re stuck at sea, the more we’ll need them.”

James blinked. “So you do think Captain Hartnell did the right thing?”

“I have no bloody idea,” Francis admitted.

James snorted. Well. So long as Francis was just as unsure of what was the right course of action as he was. James always found it reassuring when others shared his ignorance. It meant that James was not a fraud, but that the world was infinitely complex. It was what had first drawn James to academia.

Still, James couldn’t shake the feeling that he was to blame for this. He had been the one to pitch to Doctor Franklin the idea of a cruise to raise awareness about climate change. He had been the one to contact their sponsors and to choose the date. Why had he thought that he was qualified to organize an expedition of this size?

“I should have convinced Franklin to turn the ship back,” James said. “I should have listened to you sooner, Francis.”

He half-expected Crozier to gloat at this admission. But when Francis turned to look at him, there was nothing but kindness in his eyes. It cut James to his very core, left him feeling stripped raw and vulnerable.

“You couldn’t know, James. No matter what I said at the time, not even I knew what would happen.” Francis squeezed his arm, his touch the most solid thing that James had ever felt. “It’s easy to look back at it now and think of what we should have done, but you know what they say about hindsight.”

“It’s twenty twenty,” James automatically said. He caught the slight smirk in Francis’ face. “Oh, you bastard. That joke was terrible.”

Francis chuckled. “Maybe, but it made you laugh.” He reached up to cover James’ cheek. His thumb traced one of the lines on the corners of his lips. “That’s all that matters,” he said, as if he meant it, as if the most important thing in the world to him was bringing joy to a sorry excuse for an academic like him.

James’ breath caught in his throat.

Once upon a time, Doctor Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier had been an inspiration to James. Back then James had only been one of the many overworked grad students vying for Doctor Franklin’s fickle attention. James hadn’t known Francis. Not really. They had been in the same department, yes, and they had gone to a lot of the same events, but James hadn’t had the chance to have a real conversation with him. 

But despite everything, James had admired Crozier. The man was not the most well-liked person nor the most well-connected, but he was respected. The academic establishment admitted, however grudgingly, that Doctor Crozier was usually right. His reviews on ratemyprofessors described him as strict but fair. His students agreed that his classes were very rewarding if you were willing to put in the work. 

And although Doctor Crozier was by no means a Twitter superstar, among his ten thousand followers were some of the most influential scientists in the world. Whenever Doctor Crozier tweeted one of his acerbic threads, people listened.

And retweeted.

James had wanted that, too. To have a voice. To be heard. To prove to the world he was worth something.

When all those years ago Crozier tweeted a link to James’ blog with a complimentary comment, it made James day.

When, some years later, Crozier posted an article tearing down one of James’ essays, it shattered his ego.

James had spent so long trying to understand what exactly Crozier had against him. He had put so much effort into winning his good regard back. It had never occurred to him to hope that they could one day become… allies. Friends. Brothers.

And, before now, he had never dared wish to be more.

Francis lowered his arm. “We should check on the others.”

James cleared his throat. “Yes, you’re right.”

The two of them settled down to watch Morfin and John Hartnell load the lifeboat with boxes of supplies. As they stood there side by side, the backs of their hands brushed together on the railing.

"Wait," Francis said. He put his glasses on and squinted at the crowd in the main deck. "What the hell is doing there Tuunbaq?"

*

Hodgson hummed to himself as he waited in line at the breakfast buffet. One of the members of the crew--Magnus Manson, if Hodgson’s memory served him right--stood in front of him, holding his plastic tray in his hands.

“It’s so nice to have electricity back, isn’t it?” Hodgson said. “Yesterday I had so many problems shaving in the dark. My facial hair hasn’t quite recovered!”

He pointed at the spot on his cheek where his left mutton chop wasn’t.

“I shaved on the outer deck,” Manson said.

“Oh.” Hodgson frowned. “That’s quite clever. Wish I had thought of that.” 

The line advanced.

They had made do with cold food lately, but today they seemed to have returned to their usual spread of breakfast foods: bread and jam, baked beans, potatoes, sausages, and boiled eggs. They had run out of bacon a couple of weeks ago, but there were still some choices of cereals left, as well as several different types of milk.

“You know,” Hodgson said as he piled potatoes on his plate, “although Americans call chips ‘French fries’, the Belgians claim they were the first ones to come up with the recipe. They’re wrong, however. Do you know who was the first to fry potatoes?”

“I don’t know. Someone from Latin America?” Morfin replied as he filled his bowl with milk and gluten-free cereal. “Potatoes come from there. They must have been the first ones to think of it.”

“...yes,” Hodgson reluctantly admitted. “That is correct. There are records from the seventeenth century of Mapuche indigenous women in Chile serving fried potatoes at dinner.” Recovering quickly, he smiled. “But do you know what was the first European country to make chips?”

“Spain?” Manson replied. Hodgson stared at him. “I know that they were the first to colonize America. I’m not stupid.”

“Right,” Hodgson grumbled and, tray in his arms, went back to his usual table.

Doctor Silna, Crozier, Blanky and Goodsir were engrossed in a conversation about either marmalade or the colour of the tablecloth. It was hard to tell with his limited--but slowly increasing!--knowledge of ASL. Edward and Jopson were discussing a book they had both read. Irving was looking at a graph on his phone. Only Des Veoux seemed bored and unoccupied.

“Did you know,” Hodgson said as he took a seat next to, “that Saint Teresa of Avila is believed to be the first person to cook chips?”

Des Voeux looked at Hodgson’s plate with disinterest. “Those are baked potatoes, George, not chips.”

With a frown, Hodgson stabbed a potato piece and stuffed it into his own mouth2.

He was chewing thoughtfully when the door slammed open. Bridgens ran into the mess hall and stopped by Doctor Fitzjames’ table.

“Doctor McDonald!” The man panted, out of breath. “Thank God you’re here.”

“Is everything alright, Mister Bridgens?” Fitzjames asked as McDonald stood up.

Bridgens shook his head, and Hodgson felt his stomach drop at the man's next words: “Morfin has fallen ill.”

\---  
FOOTNOTES

1 At this point, Tozer realized he was fucked, because 1) Hickey’s words made a lot of sense to him, and 2) As it turned out, all that gay sex he had while deployed in Basra turned out to not be a phase, after all. [ ▲ ]

2 Saint Teresa of Avila is 100% unironically my favourite Saint ever, and is best known for her mystic poetry. 

About the Seraphim she claims visited her she wrote:

“I saw in his hands a long golden spear, and at the point of the iron there seemed to be a little fire. This I thought that he thrust several times into my heart, and that it penetrated to my entrails. [...] The pain was so great that it caused me to utter several moans; and yet so exceedingly sweet is this greatest of pains that it is impossible to desire to be rid of it, or for the soul to be content with less than God." 

Fuck, I love the mystics.

Back to the topic of fried potatoes, Belgian art historian Paul Ilegems does claim that Teresa of Avila was the one to come up with the idea for them in the 16th century. If that were true, it would predate the Mapuche women frying potatoes, but personally I think the evidence he provides (a letter where she mentions receiving a shipment of potatoes, but not how she’s planning to cook them) is pretty flimsy. Other theories claim that the first to fry potatoes were either Spanish nuns living in freshly-established Latin American convents or hungry Belgian sailors. 

If you ask me, my theory is that the first person to fry a potato was some unknown native woman trying to feed her family.

Interestingly, according to Dr Leonora Joy Adapon the Spanish were the ones to teach natives how to fry food using fat, which would make fried potatoes a traditional mestizo dish! 

Doesn’t really make up for colonialism, does it. [ ▲ ]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it!
> 
> Tune in next week (?) for the sequel: I Can't Believe It's Not March!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
